SWAG

April 13, 2015

Well its Monday everyone, which means you get an email in your inbox from myself. Happy day, I guess.

This week was busy and good! It seems like the weeks just fly by in the blink of an eye! It’s quite crazy how fast they go! I look back on the week and it’s just all one big day to me. And we are officially on week 6 of the transfer! Holy cow! This transfer literally just started a few days ago it feels like! It’s almost surreal. I have no clue what to expect for transfers. I feel like I should be leaving, you know, after 4 transfers and nearly 6 months here. It would be nice to go somewhere and just have something fresh but I wouldn't mind if I got stuck here for another transfer. At this point I am just willing to do whatever I am called to do. And I realize that if I stay another transfer it will go even faster than this one did so it would go by in a flash anyway. So we'll see how transfer calls go on Saturday night!

So to start off, Tuesday was quite the day for myself. E Cardon was just lying in bed when I got out of the shower got ready for study time and I saw that he had the trash can next to his bed. So he wasn't feeling good. So I just did my personal study for an hour and then laid down on our amazingly comfy couch for 10 minutes thinking that E Cardon might get up for comp study. But my little 10 min nap turned into a 20 min nap. That 20 min nap turned into a 30 min nap. And that 30 min nap turned into a 2.5 hour nap. We don't leave the apartment until noon every day because of our 2 hour comp study and then an hour for lunch. But we had an appointment at noon so E Cardon got up for that. After we went about our couple things we had to do we went back to the apartment for E Cardon to lay down. We got back at about 1:30. E Cardon basically just passed out on his bed for 3 hours so I sat and read the Book of Mormon for 3 hours while he slept. It was intense! I started at about Alma 20 so I got into a lot of good war chapters! It was so addicting. After about 3 hours though I was needing a break, which was perfect because we then ate dinner and then went out for the rest of the night to work. And ever since then I have been a BoM fool. I have been making some good progress with the time I have to read it. It’s been good and I realized that making the effort to read it when I can has brought the spirit into my life more and just helped me throughout my days!

We had district meeting on Wednesday and I went to Abilene on exchanges that day as well. I went with Elder Nelson who is from Layton, so we are basically BFF. I was trying to think of people I knew from Layton still but all I could think of was the Tates. He knew Austin Tate though so that was cool. There are actually tons of people from Layton here. I guess you will run into lots of people from every city in Utah no matter what mission you go to! But the exchange was fun and we had a good time together. But they are the Spanish missionaries in Abilene so most of the people we go visit are spanish speakers. So I just sit there and act like I know what’s going on. They also cover and English area. So they cover the whole city for the Spanish Branch, and then they also cover the 2nd North area. But whenever I am there we have only visited with Spanish people. I guess I have only had two successful visits in my two trips there, but both of them were Spanish. We got up on Thursday morning and went running with the missionaries that live right by them over there. So we went down to ACU (Abilene Christian University) and ran around the campus. It took me 13.5 minutes. It was death. Combine that with my first round of isometric training later that day and these last few days have been quite the adventure for me and my legs. One of the missionaries we went with is actually from Mtn. Home. His name is Elder Chung Hee. He recognized me and said that he remembers seeing me at a track meet in Kuna our sophomore year! He said that I looked familiar and then I said I was from Kuna and it all made sense. He is a cool guy! I hope I get to serve around him some more!

This coming week will be busy. We have a couple afternoons of service planned, a possible temple trip, zone training, and hopefully try to find some time to teach people! Then you throw transfer calls on top of all that and I'm in for a hoot of a week!

They are really emphasizing service right now. We do a good amount of service, but most of it is member service and we don't even report that. At the end of the month they just ask us for our hours of non-member and community service. The most we've had since they've started doing that is 4 in month. We look for service and offer it to EVERYBODY, but nobody accepts. We have gone to the Chamber of Commerce and they didn't really have anything. We filled out these papers at Goodwill but the service opportunities they have is for people who have been sentenced to community service. But we are helping out at the Taste of Sweetwater today so we should get a few hours of community service later today!

Teaching this week was a'ight. We have met with this younger guy named Christopher a couple times. This week it was when I was in Abilene but apparently they visited with him for over an hour just answering lots of questions he had and stuff. It sounds like he is just really exploring religions from what I have been told and so we need to help him actually search for truth in the right way. He apparently said that right now he is leaning towards the Jehovah's Witness................................................. We also taught this nice 86 year old man. His name is Wesley. We visited with him for a while and then taught him about the Plan of Salvation. He says he believes it all. I don't think he understand exactly what it all means so hopefully a good Restoration will help him understand. He is a champ though for being 86! He gets around awesome and we always see him out raking leaves and working! We also had a good visit with Melissa. She is awesome and really wants to learn and figure things out about religion. She likes everything we teach her but we really need to help her to actually act out in faith and truthfully look for an answer instead of just learn about things. We also taught Erica and Spiderman again, a couple times I think. Wait, one was just a visit that never became a lesson. But we were outside yesterday when we visited so it was a mess. That housing complex has SOOOO many distractions. It is basically the ghetto of Sweetwater. Spiderman actually wants to change though, and also Erica, but it’s almost impossible to live a good life when you live where they live. There is just almost no good influences over there. So we're not sure how to go about that one.

Food this week was pretty good! We had some good fish tacos at the Patton's! Mahi-Mahi is hardly even fish though. I mean, it is a fish and all and the meat looks like fish, but it tastes amazing and not like regular fish. We also had some crazy good steaks last night at the Thompson's! Nothing like you get up in Idaho! And we have Taste of Sweetwater today and will be given meal tickets so we basically get an endless buffet of samples from all the amazing food places in town! I am PUMPED!

Anyway, I hope y'all have a good week and may God bless you as you go about doing good in the world!

Love,

Elder Reed Ericson