January 19, 2015
I can’t believe that you saw us on the camera crossing the street and going
into the library. Obviously you answered
your own question and know that the library is open and I’ll be emailing you
today. However, even if the library was closed we would have gone up to
the campus library and emailed there because we are able to use the computers
there and school is in session today. Also, in regards to the card--that’s
crazy that none of the money was used. I usually put my cards in my
wallet in the card spots, but this time I did not put the card in the wallet I
just stuffed it in my pocket (bad call on my part). Yes, I have seen all
of the new videos except the Bro. Ridd’s devotional https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/article/worldwide-devotionals/2015/01/living-with-purpose-the-importance-of-real-intent?cid=HPSU011115617&lang=eng.
I love the two that I did see, the YM/YW Embark & Serve video (https://www.lds.org/youth/theme/2015?lang=eng)
and the one about faith & grace (http://www.mormonchannel.org/watch/series/his-grace/finding-your-purpose-in-life-does-faith-matter).
I love the Embark song and have listened to some of the other songs that go
with the theme for the year. Random fact, I think Matt Townsend’s son
sings one of the songs. Also, yes I can take pictures of that book for
you. The bummer is I just sent a box off this morning with one of the SD cards
in it so I will have to wait a few weeks before sending another one.
1. How was your week? What were the
highs/lows? This week has been a pretty good week and one that I won’t
soon forget. I’ll fill you in later J. We
have a lot of good things going on and the ward is starting to get vision of
missionary work and we are hoping to take advantage of that to get things moving.
Another high was we had one more lesson than we did last week and hopefully
that number can continue to go up. We had a great zone training and learned
about the faith it takes to find people and increase our teaching pool.
Something I really liked a lot was the part about how in order to find you need
to be talking with everyone you come in contact with. That is something that I have not been doing
very good at lately. So my goal is to get better at contacting everyone
and hoping to see more success from that.
2. How are things in your area? Things
are going well. Boy, the town is alive more than ever. If you look
at cameras I am sure you can see that the town is a happening place. Just
look on the weekends before you go to bed and you will see people out in full
force lining up at the bars to go get drunk. It is pretty funny/kind of
sad riding around on the bus listening to the side conversations of how awful
people feel and that they don't remember much because they were so drunk and
wasted. Oh, the life of some college students.
3. Have you had any service
opportunities? Not really. We are
possibly going to help some people stack some wood this week but we will see if
we have time at all. This week we have a lot going on. We have lots
of assignments from the bishop and WML so that is good for us. We did
help a member build some storage shelves to put in his basement.
4. What are 5 positive things from the
week? 1) The weather was decent. 2) We are starting to finally
get lessons lined up again. 3) We had dinner with our WML and were able to
continue to build our relationship with him. The downside to that story
is they have a cute little baby that is 2 months old. I was going through withdrawals
not being able to hold her. For some reason little children are starting
to get to me again and I miss being able to hold them and play with them.
It does not help that the ward is full of cute little babies.
5. How’s your weather? The weather
has been up and down. It definitely has been much warmer than the week
before, but the wind has been blowing. There were a couple of days that
were decent. Last night was kind of icy on the roads and the salt trucks
were out in force. The bus drivers were busy cautioning each other over
the radio telling other bus drivers to be careful in some spots where they were
sliding. Overall it has been decent.
6. Any info/feelings about transfers? Not
sure, I hope it does not happen because we are just getting things rolling
again and we just put out the ward mission plan and we have a full staff of
ward missionaries and things are looking good for the future. But you
know what that means, when things are going good usually that means sayonara.
So I my gut feeling is I might leave, but I have no idea. I'll know by Saturday.
7. Any mission info/meetings coming
up? I have interviews with President this Saturday, but other than
that things are pretty sparse for a bit.
9. How are things with your investigators/teaching?
a. L
& M? Unfortunately,
I think they are starting to dodge us, but we are still trying.
b. Any
new leads/referrals? Our WML has a neighbor that we may start
teaching. They are still trying to contact her and invite her to some
things. So we will see how it pans out.
10. How are things with the ward? Mission leader?
Members? Like I keep saying things are going pretty awesome.
Things are slowly starting to roll forward and we are able to get in with
members. So we will see how it goes. Another cool thing was on
Saturday we were finally able to have a meeting with everyone on the ward
mission team. There were a lot of good things that came from that and we
have a lot of good goals and ideas that we have made. A lot of things
that we are working on have come out of the book The Power of Everyday Missionaries by Clayton Christensen. I
encourage you to get it if you can and take a look at it. Can you maybe
send me a copy of it please, if you don't that is OK.
11. How are your studies coming? They are going pretty
good, I have been continuing to study the New Testament and also I have been
reading True to the Faith. That book is pretty cool. I love the
simplicity of the book. It’s full of simple
definitions that we use all of the time and it helps you understand things that
you may not know a lot about.
15. Are you still fully invested in your mission and 100%
committed? Yes, there are definitely days that are better than
others. It’s especially hard on the days that are slow, but I’m committed
to finishing out strong.
16. How are things with you and Elder C? Things are going
well. He still talks a lot about computers and programming and all kinds
of stuff that goes way over my head. But other than that we are doing well
together.
17. Anything fun that you want to share? Well this week was
quite the treat and will make for some good journal memories that I’ll remember
forever. So this former investigator that we were teaching when I first
got here decided to feed us. I had no idea that he signed up on the sheet
until we were at the church for something and we saw his name. The last
time we had checked the sign-up he wasn’t on there, but all of the sudden his
name was on it. Still not sure when he
signed up. At first I thought maybe he didn't realize what he was signing
up for. But we sent him a text asking if he was feeding us and he said
yes. I was slightly worried about what we were in for at that
point. I asked him what we were having and he said, “what the dog likes”
and I immediately thought, “oh dear, we’re in trouble”. But then he said we
were having chicken. So that was a little relief for us. We showed
up at his house and he was just barely starting to make things and I was having
a slight panic attack about how things were going to go down. So he
starts making dinner and to give a little background…the man has a lot going on
in his life so he is kind of grumpy some times. As he continues to fix
dinner he gets a call on the phone but he does not answer it. About
10 or 15 minutes later there is a loud knock on the door and he just ignores
it. Then they knock again and in a mean/rude way he says, “I'm busy”. Then from the other side of the door, a lady
begins to shout, “State College Police”. Immediately my heart sank and I thought this just
got 1,000 times worse. Now the cops are
here and we are just innocent bystanders over for dinner. Finally he lets
them in and the fire chief had come too. Apparently the alarm company got
a notice that a smoke detector had gone off and they needed to check to see if
everything was OK. The phone call before was the alarm company, but he
ignored it. I never heard an alarm going off. Finally, the cop
wanted to figure out who we were and we told them we were missionaries that had
been invited for dinner. The cop then leaned over to us and whispered, “Are
you guys OK?” We said yes. Everything turned out fine after that
and the food was decent and then we enjoyed dinner. That’s a story for
the journal for sure. The other story is about our outing with the Penn
State wrestling coaches. We had to take the sacrament to some people and they
went with us. I got to go with the head
coach, Bro. S, who also is an
Olympic gold medalist. So that was pretty cool, not many people can say
they have delivered the sacrament with an Olympic gold medalist.
18. If it’s Tuesday, did you just switch your pdays? What are
you doing for your Pday? The same old, same old…we’re going shopping,
I am getting my haircut, and then we’re going to the church after to play games
with everybody in State College.
Well there is my interesting and exciting week. Hope you all have a
wonderful week.
Elder Muir
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