New area, day by day

August 17, 2015

WEEKLY EMAIL REVIEW. Monday. Elders PDay. I visited Brooks then took a picture and came back. Then I had dinner with Carol's and they gave me a lot of pasta- a lot of pasta! Then visited Bonnie then the Sanders then visited the Chandler's then visited Welches then went home and slept.

Woke up at 6:30. Changing areas. At 7:10am  Ian took us all the way down to transfers. Dropped off Elder Taylor. Then we went to short pump mall. It was closed so we played chess. I barely won by accident. After we went to Chicken Fiesta for lunch. Afterwards we went to transfer meeting. Met my new awesome companion. Then we were stuck in traffic and I went to Five Guys. I got a ride from members from previous area to King George  (that’s a city) where I am now.

Elder Johnson is my new companion. Between transfer meeting and actually getting on the road it was two hours. We didn't have much to do but sit around and talk and see how my new companion is. We got all my stuff unpacked and then dropped Toby off. Then we came to King George  Ward building. Also we went to Burger King and got a shake. Afterwards, we did area book work and then had stuff going on where we at night we planned for our week. My companion filmed me as I'm doing this. It is quite interesting. This will be a fun transfer. I audibly say this so it types faster. Go voice type!

Wednesday, we woke up and jogged for the first time (for me) since the Glen Allen, my first area. Took a nap on the couch in the morning when we had to be in the apartment and we just had a good personal study. Comp study we had the repairman come in to fix our wall in our apartment and we talked with Juan about the importance of family and he totally agrees. He finds God in nature and sees that the degradation of the family causes the collapse of society.

After we checked up on some potential investigators and taught a family from Florida who was sitting outside. After we went to the library and had Mormon.org time then to the post office to get the boxes that I want to ship home because I have a “crapton” of stuff. After lunch we went to visit Mary. After we gave a blessing to a jdubbs (Jehovahs Witness) lady, we chatted with Mary. Went to Reggie's place and saw the McNamara household and they are super cool. We are excited to see more opportunities to help out. We then had dinner but our dinner was cut short by being able to teach Sierra at the library. We basically gave her a copy of preach my gospel then asked if next time we come by that she teach us (instead of us teaching her), she likes to talk a lot and it's kind of hard for me to fully listen for that long. Talked to a referral then went to the Edneys place then helped Sister Simpson move in with some members of the ward. Then we went to the building to sync and plan then we were done.

Thursday 

Woke up pretty much every hour on the hour last night.... Had personal and comp study then had part 1 of weekly planning, part two was after lunch at the ward building. We tried contacting a contact after to take a break but she wasn't home so we discussed religion with a lady who loves helping people out. We then went tracking and tried talking with a guy who wasn't too interested in what we talked about concerning prophets. Then we went back to weekly planning, had dinner at the apartment and discussed what we were going to do. There was an event at the ward building and we went so that I could meet some of the congregation and after we did some paperwork. Found out my companion likes the anime films I like but not the anime TV shows in general. He is a cool guy from Syracuse Utah and loves sports and Los videos juegos. This is already turning out to be a good transfer, we are helping each other get out of the wedges we have been stuck in and constantly progressing forward.

Friday 

Woke up and jogged again, killer man!  Then we had personal study and comp study where we discussed smart goals for the transfer and spiritually planned and created an individual that we will find. We then went and I cleaned and organized while Elder Johnson did area book work. We then went and visited people and I met some new folks today. We had dinner at Cindy's place and we had to go quicker then we would have liked but we also taught a man named Brother Cousins. He is cool, we then had the leftover of dinner as dinner because our dinner was a lesson with Cindy. We then walked 2 miles to save on miles and visited an investigator named Regina. We then stopped by a potential and learned some new things about each other (elder Johnson and I) we helped build a 30 ton wood splitter and visited some members. Our miracle that happened today was we stopped by a guy's house right as he pulled up to his driveway and his name was Leroy, a minister from another church but he accepted the Book of Mormon and said his neighbors were LDS and we all were very good people. 

Saturday so we woke up and I lifted some weights and stretched and stuff. Companion can bench more then me in the mornings. So we basically went to the church building and stopped by for a baptism for an 8 yr. old girl, we had to go to visit someone. Turns out they asked us to come by the time they leave for work. So we decided to go tracking and found a pretty solid potential. We stopped by the McNamara dam and dropped off/picked up food and water. We them visited and went finding some more. We helped a lady named sister Deel and helped her and a friend of her daughter cut down a huge bush. We then went to do area book work and have dinner. After we went to see Bro Toller then to check up on some potentials. We met Marvin and he wants to come to church! We also met a nice lady who said we could stop by Thursday. Visited some people in a trailer park to find out that they were moving. We gave a Book of Mormon to their father and he was really great full for it and had a desire to read it. We then came to the building and nightly planned.

Sunday we went to church in the morning and had a meeting at 7:15 am because church started at 9am. I was able to meet some new people. We had a good lesson the second hour about how God asks us to work for us to be capable of growth and development. Third hour we talked about how to be a better father and husband. I learned some new things and even some things when looking back I had already learned from my father about seeing his example of being a good dad. After church the youth invited us to their meeting that they had and they discussed how to be able to invite people to events and how to better share the gospel. From the people so far I have seen and met in this ward, it is awesome and I fee like I will be able to learn and help. From there we went to the Strickland family household and discussed patience and reverence with them. We went to the Neimen household for dinner and had some über good food over there. Bro Neimen came out with us for visiting one or two people (funny story, when we knocked on a lady's door and she just got out of cleaning after work) then went and had a lesson and found the desire of an investigator and went after and stopped by a potential and a family who haven't come in a while. They are both doing well.

Elder Day