February
23, 2015
Note from mom...we're down to
Days
So you’re probably wondering what
on earth my subject line has to do with anything. Well I hate to sound like a broken record…but,
we are frozen solid here in State College.
We had exchanges with the APs over the weekend. I’ll explain more later. Wow,
that sounds like an exciting day on Sunday. I would have loved watching
it all. I will email some
pics here in a moment. Unfortunately, I have been bad at taking pics
lately. Luckily our zone has a Google drive with a whole bunch of
pictures on it so I am going to snag some from there.
Elder Muir waiting for the bus on Valentines
Whiteout at the bus stop
Pday at the church with State College district
Altoona Zone Conference
- How was your week? What were the highs/lows? This week was a pretty awesome week. I guess I will start off with the exchanges with the AP's. Exchanges were pretty awesome. I went with Elder V. He came out the transfer before I did, so he has about 8 weeks left. He is an older missionary, I think about 26ish. He was less active for a while and got into drugs and all that jazz for a while, but now he’s on a mission and is an amazing missionary. That is beside the point though. The reason exchanges were so good is because we had a lesson with CC. The lesson was great. However, we didn’t do much after that because Elder V didn’t realize we were a walk area. He thought we had a car so he didn’t bring much in the way of cold weather clothes. We didn’t completely finish our lunch break because we had to leave early for our lesson that we were having with CC. So after the lesson we went to Panera Bread and finished our lunch break and just sat and talked and got to know each other a little more. After lunch the APs had to head back to Pittsburgh because the weather was not the greatest. The exchange was nice because I didn’t have to stress out over the schedule for the day and things like that. Another high was church yesterday. It was awesome because it was Ward Conference. The theme of the conference was Blessings of the Restoration. A stake presidency member gave an awesome talk about the restoration and talked about Joseph Smith and his honest search for truth and how it ultimately changed the world. It made me think of all the blessings that I have in my life because of the restoration and the blessings that I am trying to share with others here in PA. I also loved the priesthood lesson. It was on President Uchtdorf’s talk, Lord is it I? https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/10/lord-is-it-i?lang=eng. Instead of relating it to Judas betraying him we studied about Peter and his denial and still used the penetrating question Lord is it I? As we discussed the talk it made me think about the things in my life that aren’t in line with the Lord’s will. I thought of things I could do to realign my will instead of judging others for their problems. So I thought Sunday was an awesome day. I don't think there are many lows this week other than I still think the cold is just plain awful.
- How’s the weather been (besides miserable)? Any stories, sobbing, venting or other intervention that you need to tell? It has been just about like you explained. Being in a walk area makes things rather difficult because it’s just too cold to go out and do anything. This week almost seems worse than last week because there were so many consecutive cold days. There were a lot of nights this week that we came in a few hours early because after the sun goes down it turns frigid. Even during when the sun was shining it was really cold. But we went out and just hurried inside. On Wednesday as we were waiting for the bus to come home for dinner there was another sort of windy whiteout. It was miserable…again. Mom, if you would have been driving in it you would have probably pulled over. The month of February will likely rank among the coldest ever. Sub zero temperatures were recorded on the 14th, 15th, 16th, 19th and 20th. Monday night will probably be the 6th.
- Is the library open yet? No, it’s not scheduled to open until next Monday. It will be closed for 2 weeks. Luckily we have the campus library to use.
- What are 5 positive things from the week? 1) I survived another week of the cold. 2) The APs came on exchange with us. 3) We have another prospect for a new investigator.
- Tell me something that will make me laugh out loud :) So on Saturday we decided to go out to lunch with the APs and we were waiting to get on the bus. There were 2 girls standing outside waiting to get on with us. Let me tell you, we were lucky if it was 15 degrees outside and they thought it would be a good day to wear the super short spandex volleyball shorts. They were both shivering and nearly frozen. They were complaining that the bus needs to be there faster. I thought to myself, maybe if you had some clothes on you might be a bit warmer…but whatever. Also Bro. B was talking to us at church yesterday about an article that ranked colleges. Evidently it’s been a topic of discussion on the buses (he’s a CATA bus driver). Penn State is in the top 5 for drinking party schools. He said BYU was #1 for sober schools. I guess everyone on the buses thought it was odd that BYU was in the top 20 party schools. No one could seem to fathom that. Bro. B tried explaining as he overheard the people on the bus talking about this. He basically told them you don't always need booze to have a good party. I thought it was pretty funny.
- How’s the teaching/finding going?
- CC? She is doing well. We had another lesson with her on Saturday. We taught her the plan of salvation. I was with one of the AP's and we determined after the lesson was over that her knowledge of the gospel is not fantastic. She gets off on random tangents that only slightly have to do with what we are teaching. But hey, we are at least meeting with her and so I would call that progress.
- Single mom with 2 kids (new investigator from WML)? I guess she is not really interested. I only half believe that because all 3 of them seemed to be really interested when we taught them. She said the kids thought it was weird. Which I don't get because they seem to be the ones that really liked it. But the mom kind of runs the show and you do what she wants. So our WML is still going to be friends and continue planting seeds, but right now they don't seem to be interested.
- Any new prospects/leads? Well last night we got a text from a guy in the EQ presidency. I think they were out visiting some people. The text said that one of the less active part member families has a wife who is not a member. Evidently she is interested in taking the lessons and wants to feed us. She is a Muslim from Sierra Leone. He was too, but he joined the church. So I guess when I go over for dinner I might get some crazy food. Hello to more Fufu. We will see where it goes. Right now we just need to do some more follow up.
- How are things with the ward members? Things are going great. The ward loves us. That’s a big plus for us, so hopefully that will continue. I hope that I can stay here for the rest of my mission because of that.
- Do you need anything? Maybe some more hand warmers, but I think other than that I am good right now. I am trying to be low key at the moment since transfers are in 2 weeks and I don’t want to pack extra to my next area if I’m transferred. I have tried to con President into letting me stay here until I go home so we will see what happens.
- Can we do/pray for anything? Pray that our teaching pool will continue to grow and that the people that we are teaching and may teach will progress.
- Can you use all of the gift cards that I sent in the Vday package? Yes, I have used the Chili’s card already. We used that for Friday night dinner. Let me tell you for a Friday night I have never seen the Chili's servers so bored and not knowing what to do with themselves. I think it was partly due to what Penn State calls THON. It’s basically a big dance party for 48 hrs. They are raising money for children’s cancer research. If you go to thon.org I think you can find out more about it.
Well there is my frigid week. Take care, thanks for all you do :)
Love,
Elder Muir
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