I'm not sure what my total opinion is of the time change. The spring forward isn't fun, but the change is more helpful here than in the west. It gets dark soooo early here in the winter, so it is nice to have a bit more sunlight (which was the intended purpose of it all). We could have like a 4 hour change here and then it would be lined up to about normal. maybe we should have a 4 hour time shift and have the day off the next day! that would make everything work perfect.
now that that is settled...
QUESTIONS:
did you get my postal letter with your account info?
I did! It had some good updates and funny stories and kylie's schedules. I wonder if she'll end up going to all those track meets, I think my schedule would look just like that, but I didn't have to/get invited to the many of the saturday meets and a few other exclusive ones. My senior year I went to more. I think the All-comers meets were more for before the actual season started
talk about your gym, planet fitness....was it your companion's idea to join, is there loud music playing for all to hear, what about girls and their workout attire...do you workout every day...what is your workout there, like lifting weights, do you do cardio work there...are there many people there in the morning when you get there? have you been able to set up the "pay straight from your checking account" that you wanted to do?
It was his intial idea to join, but I was happy with it. There is music playing, but it's not super loud. Even though the music is obviously not mission approved music, President has said you are not allowed to bring headphones to listen to anything else, headphones are always prohibited (biblia blanca).
Generally the people are decently modest. We've seen 2 different members there before. There are usually like 20-25'sh people when we get there. We haven't been great about going lately though. My plan has been to have 1 day to do bench press (chest), dips (tricepts) and a shoukder workout (with dumbells), another day to do a back workout, pullups, curls (bicepts) and a forearm workout and a 3rd day do to do lower body workouts and abs. I just rotate those.
When we stay at the apartment and I work out it's still push-ups, crunches and maybe pull-ups. Also when we go to the gym we usually run (like 4 mins away) and I start by running about a mile on the treadmill. Also at planet fitness they have free tootsie rolls. I have not figured things out with the gym paying system yet, so mine is still hooked to Elder Jone's bank and I will use the info to switch it to mine.
I can't believe the person you were talking to on the phone didn't comment on the fire going on in the house or on my missionary service. Good try though! Good job getting to share a success story during ward conference. our WML yesterday shared about how he was in a taxi and ended up saying something like "off the wall question: Have you ever read the book of mormon?" and ended up having a great conversation and giving him a copy/the #of the missionaries in his area.
How did you do with the new daylight savings time change? I hate it. I just hate the time change. I vote to just stick with one and be done!!
Oh, I jumped the gun on this one.
Anything interesting happen at church today?
hmmm. So Saturday night we had the Lynnfield ward annual "lasagna bake off", and we were given some extra cookies and lasagna, and the member who usually bring us food on Sunday brought us her stuff Saturday (4 pork chops with stuffing and green beans). On Sunday she brought us casserole (because she won't be here to make us food next week) and then our Sunday dinner appointment gave us some leftovers; so over the weekend we went from running out of food to having quite a lot! Also we helped set up for a nearby branch to have a baptism in our chapel. There were like 50 less people than usual, probably because of the time change.
Sorry to ask again, but how many sets of missionaries are in your Ward? I keep hearing of Wards with mulitiple companionships! I heard today that the Chinese branch, Mountain View, has 4 companionships!!
only 2! there used to be 4, but the others got outed as soon as I came in. now, there is only us. I think if there were more cars we would have more, but this area doesn't have good public transportation. 4 companionships is a lot!
What was the best thing you ate last week?
Probably a tie between the turkey at our sunday dinner, and the roast beef (shredded, not the slices) sandwiches we had at our Mission Leadership Council meeting (all zone leaders and sister training leaders, we have it once a month then we have zone meeting 2 days later based on the trainings we got) we had earlier in the week.
Our zone meeting went really well this time. It was about finding new investigators through the people you are already teaching, asking good questions in lessons, using the area books to organize all the things we've been learning/creating a finding pool, and also a quick zoom out big picture that there will always be a ton of ideas about how to do things, some are essential to be effective (like working with members), and there are also some bad ideas that never work (like playing Uno in your apartment), but for all the rest you have to figure out what is best for your own area and be a bit creative and really make it your own.
They told us there will be a "finding" part in every zone meeting we have from now on because as soon as it stopped being an emphasis the # of new investigators dropped all throughout the mission. During the finding part of our ZM we had everyone do role plays, for questions we had everyone come up with a really good question for L1. We had the meeting in a cultural hall with everyone's chairs in a big semicircle and for the area books part we asked a ton of questions and whenever someone answered one well they got to try to shoot a basket from their chair, and the district that had the most points by the end got a reward. We really used our packet we made up for this part. After that as the "reward" we brought ice cream with a plethora of choices of toppings for everyone, and the winners got to go first. That was the object lesson for the last idea, because everyone got ice-cream, but with all the toppings ideas each person had to really take charge and "make it their own" just like with their areas. There were some essential parts (ice-cream, bowl, spoon) and some terrible ideas (ranch dressing, olives) that no one would want and lots in between. One person did use olives though.
the Sister Training Leader in our zone had changed since last time so we were training with a different person than last time.
The Lasagna bake off thing on saturday went really well. It mostly a fund-raiser for the youth, an auction a lot like ours. For the Lasagna part the rule is the Elders quorum is supposed to make lasagnas, with no help from wives, and it is a contest, with the missionaries as judges. It was fun. Hard to judge 20 different ones though, many were very good. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd as well as "most creative" were chosen and given a plate as prize. Most creative was easy because he made "apple pie lasagna"; technically I don't think someone should win a prize for making something that I wouldn't call lasagna, but I guess it was creative. He always wins that part.
the Auctioneer was very good. The youth got a good sum of money. the only priest in the ward auctioned off a service: "4 hours of looking cool with me at the mall". It was purchased for $55. Someone made stained glass which was cool, there were a lot of good things/desserts.
We had 5 investigators come (one was someone we don't really teach anymore though, he just likes to bash, but we still called to invite him for lasagna), and another that came and walked in and got a little overwhelmed and then left, which was a little sad. She is an older lady who's taking care of someone in her home who's dying. We got to talk to her a little before she left and we brought her a plate of lasagna afterwards. She was doing fine. That was her first time coming to the church. For one of the other investigators it was also his first time coming to the church and we gave him a church tour during the auctioning.
We had a lesson with Mary, who's the investigator who befriended a member at the YMCA pool. She is so interesting. She totally believes Joseph Smith was a prophet, loves the book of mormon (read it for 2 hours saturday) but doesn't totally believe the church is true because she's catholic. I think she mostly needs a bit more time, and she doesn't really understand a few key things like the Plan of Salvation which really help tie it all together. Also she is hanging onto the idea of the trinity, and for me it's easier to pray and ask questions to the God that we know in the church. She prays, but still likes to use her prayer book (which I think is basically fine to use, especially as a starter, but not exclusively. Those prayers say great things and I think can be meaningful, but no book can write out what your true thoughts, feelings, insecurities and joys are. If you come to believe God is your Father in Heaven you realize you don't read from a book to talk to "abba").
that's all for now. It was fun to get emails from the StevenHeather and Christopher.
I love you
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