River Falls week 5

So unfortunately I will not be able to write a long letter or really send many emails today. Our P-Day was changed to Thursday, July 4th and we were given 1 hour to email today. So I will answer a lot of letters next week. 

So this week has been rather slow. Two of our main investigators, Grace and Mary, repeatedly texted us and basically told us to not come back. So that was sad. An investigator named Jim, whom I think I mentioned last week, is really progressing. This man has done basically all you can do wrong in life and is currently on probation, but he loves everything we teach. He has decided he wants to be Mormon, he has come to church the last 2 weeks and has no intention of stopping. He lives with his fiance and we taught him the law of chastity and told him he could not get baptized unless he moved out or got married, he called the bishop and wants to get married before the end of July. I will keep yall updated on him. 

 

Anyway, in my limited time I will now share a rather amusing series of events. So Elder Berg and I went on a 48 hour exchange with our zone leaders one town over. They live will a millionaire who travels a lot, and has a LOT of rules. The missionaries are permitted to use 2 bedrooms and the bathroom upstairs and the kitchen downstairs. That is it. Only certain counter spaces are allowed for use as well. Anyway, so Elder Sargeant/Looye had to go out one morning so we stayed home and watched The District (these missionary training movies) as part of my training. Elder Berg popped it into the DVD player on the 60" TV in the house and we watched it for awhile (the zone leaders said they watched the restoration video on it once, but i think they were kidding...). Anyway after awhile i was like yeah, this will get us into some serious trouble. lets go back to watching it on our mini dvd player. so we did, much to elder Berg's protests. We then ate some bagel bites for lunch and waited for the ZLs to get home. when they did, Elder Berg was like, "So we watched the TV." Elder Looye said that was not a funny joke and Elder Sargeants face was one of complete, inexplicable horror. The mental image I have of that scene still makes me laugh out loud. anyway, they asked if the remote was back in the exact same place and the tv was on the exact same channel. we promised they were and they said we were lucky the owner didnt come home because WW3 would have broken out. Well, things got worse. As i went to the library with Elder Sargeant he asked me what I ate for lunch. I said Elder Berg had heated up bagel bites (elder looye had shown elder berg what we were and were not allowed to eat in the morning while i was in another room). Elder Sargeant stopped the car and was like i really hope you are kidding. Turns out those bagel bites were the owner's and he has strict rules about no one touching his stuff. So we drove home to get the packaging so we could go to the store, get new bagel bites, and replace them so we could pretend none of this ever happened. Well all that was left was the heating instructions that had been cut out. So we took the instructions to walmart to try and find some bagel bites, but they didnt have any. Elder Sargeant's blood pressure was going up by the minute. We then tried another store and found some bagel bites! We took the cooking instructions and began matching it to the lettering on the bagel bites in the store. Luckily, we found some of the same brand. The unfortunate part was what elder berg and i ate were on trays of 12. The store only had trays of 20 and 9 for sale. so i bought two trays of 20 (elder berg and i ate 24 together) and we went home. The owner was no doubt going to realize what had occurred, but we prayed (and i mean literally, Elder Sargeant said a prayer that this man's heart would be softened toward us) that the increased number of bagel bites would make up for the mistake. Elder Sargeant and I then went out for the day with him mumbling something about us being sinning dogs. I told him at least he would always remember his last week of his mission quite well. He said yeah, i will remember running. RUNNING FOR MY LIFE. We laughed and went back to work. 

That was basically the highlight of my week. On a spiritual note, lets talk about the atonement. So before my mission president arrived 2 years, our mission had quite the reputation of being unconsecrated. People went to concerts, played the card game Magic on non-pdays (they actually had multizone card game days on proselyting days. both things are strictly forbidden), and a lot of other stuff. Our mission president came in and cleaned house. But he does not EVER preach to us obedience (unless an obvious issue arises, of course). What he does is teach about the atonement every time he talks to us. and i mean every single time. Why? As our understanding of the atonement increases, our love for the savior will increase and our desire to share his gospel will increase as well. Our desire to be obedient will naturally increase because of this. I think this is quite remarkable to think about. My mission president created a very consecrated mission based off of the teachings of the atonement almost single handedly. I think we can all apply this to our lives. Parents to their children, for example. If we find ourselves not wanting to obey a commandment or two, study the atonement. It will change your life. 

Anyway, I love all of you. I will write you all back next week when I actually have P-Day. Have a great week :)

-Elder Damron