February 22, 2016
Hello to the very best group of family and friends there
could be! Ho-ly cow! It was an adventurous week for myself here in West Texas!
Sure was a good one though, thanks to the good Lord and his grace!
I will start off by informing you about the main event of
the week, my trip up to Lubbock for MLC! Well, for those of you who don't know
(like all of you), San Angelo is a solid 3+ hours from Lubbock. So our
adventure started by leaving San Angelo at about 7:00pm
on Thursday night. And that means that most
of the trip was driven in the dark. I was making the trek with Elder Young who
is serving in a small town called Brady, TX which is about an hour southeast of
San Angelo. Well, Elder Young and I figured that the fastest route would be for
us to travel through Colorado City (which is in the Sweetwater Branch - where
we both served) and then up through Snyder and up to Lubbock. Definitely the
most straight shot route geographically speaking. Well, soon after getting out
of town we found out that this route included nothing but a two lane road with
a 75 mph speed limit. Also, to add to it, the road was pretty curvy and
actually went through a bunch of hills and stuff (imagine that!). I realized
that this was probably a bad idea after suddenly hitting a pretty good curve at
a mere 80 miles an hour. Yikes. Oh boy, we knew we were going to be in for a
good one! But it was no biggy, I found my groove on the road and got used to
the handling necessary to handle the landscape. At one point Elder Young looked
down at the GPS and saw that our estimated arrival time was going to be past 11:00............ crap. That's no good! So for
about 30 minutes we were confused about life thinking that our trip was for
some reason going to take 4 hours and have us arrive after 11:00. Luckily the gps was just on the fritz and
was set an hour ahead for some reason, so our 10:00
arrival stayed true. Anyway, we had a DANG GOOD time. Holy camolie! Hahaha
Elder Young is one of a kind! There is no one in the world that is like him! He
brings up the weirdest conversation topics and we were both just enjoying life
far too much. More than should be allowed!
Anyway, we arrived in Lubbock a little after 10:00 and walked into the apartment we were going
to be staying at to see that there was already an extra companionship there.
Sweet, 6 elders, gonna be a party. Well after about 30 minutes 5 more
missionaries walked in the door........ nice, 11 elders in one apartment that
only has two mattresses that belong to the original elders' beds. Luckily, 3 of
the extra 5 left so we were left with 8 missionaries. So we all took our spots
on the floor and began our attempt to sleep, emphasis on the
"attempt". There was no sleeping. We were all quiet and attempting to
sleep, but for some reason that floor wasn't doing it for us. I would be wide
awake and be thinking about how I was probably the only one having a hard time
sleeping when I would hear Elder Young toot and the other missionary roll
around uncomfortably. At about 6:00 after a
few morning sports alarms went off, I walked out to the main room (I was
sleeping in the extra bedroom) to 4 WIDE AWAKE elders. I asked "Did a
single one of you sleep at all last night?" and I got 4 jovial
"NOPE!" responses! So, that was an experience. I have no clue how we
all made it through MLC without getting drowsy, plus long drives home. But
somehow the good Lord pulled us through!
MLC was LEGIT! All of my pals,
including some old companions that I haven't seen in quite some time, were
there and we got some sweet instruction about some new things they are going to
be doing in our mission and received some good training on some leadership
stuff. Nothing that would interest any of you non-missionaries. It was sweet
though. And then our drive home was another experience of its own. Elder Young
and I had a fun time and them nasty windy roads gave me another fit. However we
arrived in safety. Plus, for dinner I had an 8 pack of double stuff Oreos and
an entire bag of Cheetos. GROSS. That didn't feel good. I hate junk food but
for some reason I still eat it. All in all, MLC was a memorable experience and
I am pumped to tear it up with all of the instruction we received! Also, I
forgot how amazing the flat land up in Lubbock is! You think it sounds ugly,
but I just can't get enough of looking out over miles and miles of flat land
with plowed fields with the sun setting on the horizon! I miss it! San Angelo
is claimed to be "better looking" than the rest of West Texas but I
beg to differ!
On Saturday we had an
interesting opportunity arise. It seemed pretty normal but turned out to be
interesting. We received a text from a member asking if we could go give a
blessing to his friend in the hospital. So we went with him, and walked into
the room and there were a couple people in there visiting with the lady. After
a little investigation I realized that one of them was the preacher at the
church that this lady went to! So, I was kind of hesitant to go ahead and
offer her a blessing but I figured we needed to, even with her preacher there.
She accepted, so I had to explain to her the purpose of the consecrated oil and
anointing her with it, and then how the blessing was going to work. And then we
proceeded to give her a blessing.... with her preacher there. Yikes. We
just gave her a blessing and I had to focus on thinking about her and not her
preacher being there. Afterwards he thanked us for doing it for her and he
said he enjoyed being there because he had never seen that before. It
was definitely awkward, but I just acted friendly and it all worked
out well. As we were driving away I just got hit with emotion and the
spirit. I have had a lot of sappy personal moments lately. I was just
so humbled that the Lord trusts me to administer his priesthood
authority. It is humbling enough to think about how he trusts me to let
alone hold it, and then it just adds onto it when I have a chance to bless
people and act in His place. I have had many other experiences like that
recently. I had an opportunity to do some ministering to another missionary,
one of my leaders at that, last week and I just sat there for a while after
getting off the phone and just felt so much humbling gratitude that I was able
to minister to a good friend of mine in a significant way. I have been learning
a lot about ministering to others lately and how to use my God given gifts to
bless others, and it has been a life changing experience for me!
On a different note, let me fill you in on a little bit
about West Texas. So, we went and picked up some trash at a cemetery across the
street from our apartment last week. We found a fence line that had a bunch of
trash on it and went to work. However, this fence line was filled with every
single possible plant that has any sort of thorn growing out of it in the
entire world. Good gads! And I ain't talking rose bush type thorns, I am
talking about heavy duty, metal like, barbed, 3 inch long, non-dulling
thorns!!!!!! These things are monsters! There were like 5 different kinds of
plants that all had lethal killers coming out of them! I got a smaller cactus
thorn stuck in my finger (yes, I was wearing gloves, it went through them) and
it hurt like the devil pulling the tip of that thorn out! Those things have no
place in the world. Get!
As for the rest of the work this past week, we had tons of
stuff to do here and there and I feel like we didn't get very much proselyting
time. We didn't have many lessons and we hardly had any time to get out and
find people. However, this week doesn't seem to have much on schedule so we
should be able to go out and go hard! I am excited to just get out and let the
people know about the good word! Because it is the truth and will change their
lives!
Well I best be closing this! I hope and pray that y'all will
be blessed in all your endeavors this week and that the grace of the Lord will
attend you in y'alls lives! I love you and pray for you every day!
God bless ya!
Much love,
Elder Reed Ericson
Me with the twin buttes of San Angelo in the background. Didn't even realize they were there until after. Wish I could have gotten more centered....
Elder Young and I before we departed back to San Angelo. Fun times.
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