Jrnl 11-24-09 through 12-3-09

Jrnl 11-24-09
Last night it was actually raining and melted some of the snow, so today it all turned to ice. I only slipped once and that was leaving someone’s house in the dark. Actually, it was our new investigator, but she’s a funny lady. She is living with a Samoan member family and she’s native American, and the first thing she said when we got there is she’s not going to be a Mormon. She’s even read some of the “Mormon Bible” already. So we cleared up some stuff up for her and committed her to keep reading. Right after that we were able to give Shenna a blessing because she’s having a hysterectomy or something and has been in a lot of pain. We also went with Beau to get her an MP3 player and stuff. She’ll be in the hospital for at least 2 days and Beau has to work so it’ll be tuff, but the Relief Society is going to provide meals and stuff.
Jrnl 11-25-09
Elder Connors gave a good district meeting this morning, mainly about the importance of gathering in the 12 tribes in preparation for the Second coming and having enough faith to do God’s will and expect Him to provide a way to accomplish His purposes.
The new missionaries came in today. 2 sisters, and like 12 Elders. They keep opening or reopening areas like Nome, another in Fairbanks, and stuff. Our district did the Greenie tract with some of the new Elders. Elder Connors and I actually stayed together with Elder Fishburn from Ogden area. It’s funny I was in that spot only six weeks ago. Sister Cranney who came out with me went by herself with one of the new sisters. It was interesting to remember my perspective then and how it has changed. I don’t know if it’s necessarily better now. I liked how bold Elder Fishborn acted even though he barely knew what to say or how to follow up. (I’m not saying I do any better). I just always want to be confident in my God who has called me here and never doubt, and never fear.
We started teaching a Samoan recent convert tonight after our dinner appointment and they wanted to feed us. I made the mistake of trying to refuse (which Elder Connors previously said you can’t refuse Samoans) and he said it’s an insult to not accept things where he’s from so we had a lot of soup and baked bananas – peel and all, that were like as hard as wood. It was good except my stomach almost exploded.
Jrnl. 11-26-09
Happy Thanksgiving! This was a really different day. We had a nice breakfast at a members house with the zone, but I tried not to eat too much to save up for dinner at 4. We went to the Mission Home to pick up Elder Powell and his new companion from the MTC, Elder Stone. They’re staying with us tonight on the couches or something and tomorrow morning we’re dropping them off at the airport going to Saint Petersbury down South. They seem like great missionaries and Elder Powell served here for 6 months, so he knew the members and he loved this ward. it snowed pretty good last night so the roads were way slippery. Especially because it’s Thanksgiving and the roads didn’t get plowed at all. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at a Spanish members home (Rueda’s). it was a fun dinner from 4 till about 7. Elder Powell was from the same town or ward as sister Rueda’s family so that was funny we happened to be eating with them the night he was there. Actually it was really good thing it was Elder Powell staying with us because Sister Rueda wouldn’t have fed us if she didn’t know the missionaries coming. She’s a way funny lady though. She saved her son’s cell number when he called for Mother’s Day on his mission and she tried to call him. I can see mom doing that {cw: In my defense, I’ve had Bryce’s phone number for a couple months. He sent me a letter to his mission President with his cell phone number on it. I have never tried to call it!}. Well, hopefully not. He was a good missionary though and had his companion tell her not to do that.
Jrnl 11-27-09
We shoveled a lot of driveways today. It was warm so the snow was heavy. I’m probably going to be sore in the morning but it’s a good thing to be physically tired. We got stuck right in front of Bishop Kimpton’s house when we parked. Luckily he was out of town. The UPS guy stopped to help push, but then he said good luck, I got to go. We got out easily though after we shoveled the snow from under the car. So it was lucky we had snow shovels.
Jrnl 12-1-09
Today was an average day. We got in some tracking and found some members home before 4 p.m., even though our 1 appointment today fell through. It is so hard to find people home during the daytime which is about 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. now. We had a good dinner with the Clark’s including Megan’s twin sister, Page, who actually made dinner which was churrito’s. Cheyenne is funny. He ate like twice as much as me, and I thought I had a lot, and he is way skinny. He says he always eats like that. He’s lucky he can eat so much without gaining anything. Anyway, last night we talked to the Clark’s about family home evening. (We were supposed to have FHE with the Motugas’, but they must have forgotten). We played a game with them, one of those aggravating ones where you have to figure out a certain pattern. We were going to guess which book of Mormon they picked. . . I’m not describing it well, but it was funny. Except Savannah got a little mad she couldn’t’ figure it out. It was a good thing to do with them though, because Cheyenne said he’s never just played games in his family so hopefully they’ll start doing something like that. Those are some of my most favorite memories is playing games with my family and cousins.
Jrnl 12-3-09
Today was, how about interesting, day. We got all zeros on our key indicators, but we happened to give out a Book of Mormon to an old man who the Pettijohn family had been working with, or at best is friends with. So that was cool. We happened to influence that and Sister Pettijohn got really excited about it. We ate at a Samoan’s house tonight, the Motuga’s and at the Omna’s last night. It is good food, but we almost exploded. The Omna’s actually fed us American food like potatoes, bbq, chicken, meatballs, and corn. At the Motuga’s we had this Hawaiian noodle stuff that was pretty good, fried pork, crab salad, shrimp, raw octopus (which actually wasn’t too bad except the nubby suction things were weird) and some raw fish that I wasn’t man enough to try. Then to top it off we had cake and ice cream. They think they’re doing us a favor, but they might end up killing us. No, it wasn’t bad because we prepared early and had tiny lunches.