Letter #3

 Wassup everybody, this week has been absolutely wild, like it's unbelievable, I can't even explain what I'm feeling right now! (I'm sure you other missionaries can relate) I don't even know what to write, there's just so much going on and if I wrote it all down this would be an extremely long email and it wouldn't make very much sense anyways. 

So I'll just start out at the beginning and hopefully I'll be able to say what I want to say. Me and about 13 other missionaries who I didn't know left the MTC super early Wednesday morning, flew out of Salt Lake and touched down in St. George at about 11. When we got there, we were driven to the mission home where we got to meet our mission president, President Staples, as well as our new companion/trainer (trainers are expirienced missionaries who have been out for a while. They help us greenies adjust and learn how to be a missionary for real) President Staples and his wife are super cool. He is a fun loving guy and cracked some jokes with us, but he is also very straight to the point. He's serious about the rules and made sure we all knew what we needed to know. I could tell that the mission work was super important to him and he truly wanted us to be the best we could. I really appreciate his example and his love for us missionaries. 

My new companion is Elder Shipley. He's been out for about 11 months now and is from Sorrento, Florida. He is a super great missionary and he takes his work super seriously. He's crazy smart and has over 100 different scriptures memorized that he can just pull from his brain at any time. He doesn't even really prepare for lessons and stuff, he just knows it all and goes off of the spirit. The only reason he does prepare is to help me prepare for the lessons and interactions we have. I've already learned so much from him. It's almost intimidating how much of a missionary he is. 

Elder Shipley and I got called to the Parowan area. It has a few small towns and a lot of farm land. We had to whitewash it, meaning that we were both new to the area and didn't know really anything about it. We had some notes and stuff from the previous missionaries, but basically we had to start from the beginning getting to know the people and the area. 

We left the mission home Wednesday afternoon at 2 and drove for about an hour to Parowan. Along the way he told me that we had 3 lessons already planed for the afternoon. I was like, what!? Already!? I mean I knew they threw you right in but I was expecting something like door knocking or meeting with the ward leaders or something little easier at least. 

Turns out only one of those lessons worked out, the other 2 didn't answer the door, but the one we did teach was about the Plan of Salvation to an older woman named Nancy. Honestly, Elder Shipley had most of the lesson; I taught a few points but the rest of the time I just sat there, kinda shaking with how nervous I was, and listening to my companion talk. It went well though, Nancy said she learned a lot. 

The rest of the week went by super slow but super fast at the same time. We did a lot of door knocking and talked to a lot of people. I've been able to get more comfortable with sharing the gospel as well. A lot of the people were super nice (there were some wackos who weren't very happy to see us, but most were pretty chill), but just about everybody was either a member or a nonmember who had already heard of the church and wasn't interested. 

We have a few people that we're supposed teaching, but they are getting all flaky on us and keep canceling our lessons. We even had a person on date for baptism, but they weren't ready so we had to cancel the date. But he's a super great guy and I know eventually we can help him get baptized. 

That's basically how the week went. Today, my new p-day, is just about the first break I've had, got to see some dinosaur footprints and some petroglyphs and them we went to play some pickleball and skip-jo with a few other elders. That's really about it, been kind of a nice relaxing day, getting ready to head back to work tonight. Sorry if some of that seemed confusing. I tried to keep it simple, but life as a missionary right now is anything but simple. 

Anyways, keep sending me your emails! You don't know how much I enjoy reading them! Talk to you guys next week!













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