Received Monday, January 13, 2014

QUESTIONS:

did you get Grandma's christmas gift/box?

yes! I got it at MLC (big meeting with all the zone leaders, largely getting training on what to teach at zone meeting, which was only 2 days later) last wednesday. It did have some ties, and sticky popcorn!

Have you seen Nana's birthday card yet?

yes!

How is your weather?

kind of up and down. today and yesterday have been warm though, raining and melting all the snow. It's in the 40's today. Quinn is jealous. Christopher's DC friends would be comfortable

what are you doing for fun today?

mas deportes! muchos de los missionaries en nuestro Zone habla espanol y me gusta attempo a hablar con ellos. This zone is in many ways teh opposite of my last one. Here it is all cities and we're all close together, and there are many language missionaries, which makes it easy to get together to play sports, and all the hispansic/South american missionaries are great at soccer. There are little goals to play with indoors. we'll probably do volleyball and soccer (last time we started with volleyball untill enough people said something like "lets play futbol now") like last time.

do you have a washer and dryer in your apartment?

it's in the basement, we share it with the other people, but have dibs with it every monday which is perfect.

do you live just with elder Johnson?

yes, but actually his name is Elder Jones. Embarrassing mistake by me last time. A lot of the Elders live in 4 elder apartments, but not us.

I google mapped your address; it looks like you live in a big white house looking place! I sent you a picture of it in the mail. Would you say that is what your apartment looks like??

Follow up next week, I haven't got the picture yet.

Are you still the driver?

we switch of every day. For Zone leaders they don't pick a designated driver, I think it's to make exchanges easier when we go with other missionaries and we can both drive

What kind of car are you driving now?

A minivan. A Dodge caravan 2014. Kind of funny trio be driving a big clodhopper like that, it's a good car though. We went on exchanges last week and I went to another elder's area (to do a baptisimal interview) and drove there car, a 2014 Toyota Corolla, it was a super nice, felt very sporty. Even had automatic windows. (how is the old green Corolla doing btw?)

How long has Elder Johnson been in this area?

E Jones has only been here 1 transfer. It's especially interesting because there used to be 4 missionaries in the area, and they basically split it in half, but now we have the whole thing, and on top of everything else he was gone a lot of last transfer in different areas because his companion was the one Mandarin speaker in the mission and they needed to go teach the mandarin speakers other missionaries were finding. So we're meeting a lot of people for the first time together here.

Do you have many dinner appointments?

Most every day. It's great. Also there's a super nice grandma aged lady who brings us food every sunday that we basically eat all week for lunch. Last week she didn't know the other elders would be gone (and they were in a trio), so she cooked for 5. She gave us probably 10-12 pork chops with stuffy and containers with lots of rice and mashed potatoes. Very yummy and convenient.

Any funny experiences this week?

 yea, I feel like we had 100 awkward missionary moments. One day we needed to call a family in the ward, the Johnsons. I dialed. While it was ringing I said "Mark Johnson, right?", for that is who I called. Elder jones said I don't think so, I'm not sure that is. then someone ( a woman) picked up. I figured it might be an inactive member or something so I just went with it. We had a small conversation (we quickly could tell she was a member, but not the correct sister johnson) and she was talking about how she just was speaking to the missionaries on her porch last week, but we are new, so we could set up an appointment next sunday at church. While at church we asked someone about that Johnson family, and we were told they moved to Idaho last year! Anyway I don't know if that made a great story, but it was funny for us.

 

Remember to wear your retainer.

I usually am very good but this morning went to brush my teeth and realized I had went to sleep without it, so good reminder

 

This has been a weird week on tuesday we had the webex with the whole mission. 90% of it was President going over different things in the white handbook (obedience). He was very loving and friendly the way he did it, but I think it's too bad, we could be getting training about how to be better teachers, or be closer to the spirit by better prayer or improved scripture study, but instead President felt he needed to go over basic obedience.

Wednesday we went to MLC and that took up the entire day until our dinner appointment. It was a really good meeting though

Thursday our zone had interviews with president. So as to be efficient with time we organize it so one district comes at a time, gets a training from the Assistants, then by the time all their interviews are done, the training is done and the next district comes in. The Zone leaders stay the entire time though, so we were there all day (didn't get to finish studies, picked people up to get there, then we didn't get back till after curfew). So we got to get/help with the training 3 times, so by the end we knew it well. we would have had it a 4th time, but we skipped one to plan out zone meeting with the Sister Training Leader (kind of like a ZL, but a sister).

then friday we did Zone meeting. (mostly about how to help people have a good experience with the Book of Mormon, not just throw them onto it).

Next week should be more normal

We had lots of good moments in the area as well. we had a lesson with an investigator in a members home, which is ideal. It's a neat story. The Hahn's (awesome members, very missionary minded) met Mary (grandma aged) at the community pool (I think at YMCA) and became friends and started inviting her to church things. Mary really liked it. I guess she's been coming to church and stuff for a few months now, but doesn't really want to admit she is thinking about actually joining the church. she gave like a 7 minute talk at testimony meeting and said how much she liked all the people here.

You could tell the Arcadia missionaries you were willing to meet there people and do lessons in the home, and they would probably really appreciate it.

Last night we had a cool dinner apointment with a young couple, the E family. Sister E had a neat conversion story, she moved like 3 or 4 times in her childhood/youth, but always ended up near a mormon family with a girl her age. They would invite her to the different primary activities and things and she would go, eventually joined the church at like 13.Think about her friends who invited her to little activites growing up before she moved. They have no idea now she's temple married and has a huge testimony! we also talked to them about their goals of sharing the gospel, and they they talked about making a Mormon.org profile so they could put it up, and share it as opportunity arises and there was a family they wanted to invite over for dinner.

Over all things are really good!
I love you!