Get the Disease!

Well it’s been a really good week and time has just really flown by. We were on exchanges again most of the week to finish out the transfer, but that was really good. I enjoyed getting to know the other Elders a lot better. It is so crazy how another transfer has gone by. I feel like I just left Quartzsite! Even more than that, I feel like I just left the MTC. 

In missionary work things are hard. I haven’t been in my area a whole lot recently and when I am in the area we have been having a lot of challenges, but I am very excited for this new transfer to find ways to be successful and get more of the ward on board. 

The highlight of the week was definitely when Elder Clarke (yes with an "e") came and spoke to our mission. He is from the seventy and was a real entertaining speaker. It was our iPad conference in preparation to receive the iPads in the coming weeks. Surprising, they didn’t really focus too much on the iPads. They talked about them, but they focused more on who we need to be as missionaries and members of the church. It is super cool to see the trust the church is going to give us missionaries to appropriately use the technology they will give us. It really is going to be up to us in following the rules they have put in place for us. This will prepare us for the rest of our lives to have the self-discipline we need and not to have our electronic devices be our masters. I left my book of notes back home, but he shared some really good insights with us. It was a very open discussion format and he basically just spoke to the whole mission for four hours. But it was crazy how fast the time flew. The focus was our purpose; which is to invite others to come unto Christ and that we are the only ones that can do this. We are the only people in the entire world, all 80,000 of us, that are set apart to teach the gospel to all creatures. We are not iPad missionaries but we are Disciples of Christ. These things will help further our work, but we can’t have them hinder the work we are already doing. He also said that this is the time for us to change and become who our Father wants us to be. Never again will we have the same opportunity to change as drastically. He also said that the things we do will change the eternities. It is not only our lives we will affect, but our kids, and their kids. So we all felt very uplifted at the end of his message. He told us to "get the disease" and we all really liked that!

And so taking his advice last night, I was with an elder who is going home this week to end his mission. Yesterday was his last full Sunday to proselyte and we had arrived back to the apartment at 8:00 p.m. so he could grab something. I could kind of tell he was done for the night and just wanted to lie around. So I ran around the apartment and grabbed all the Book of Mormons I could find (only 8) and was like, “come on man, let’s go! Put your tie back on. We are going to go hand out all these Book of Mormons tonight and we are not going to come back until we do!” I was being super energetic and he was laughing and complaining and was like, “man, I am gonna kill you!” But, we said a prayer and I took off out the door and was walking super-fast and telling him "apurate!" -hurry up! Haha He isn’t a Spanish speaking elder, but oh well.  So I started running and just talking to everyone we saw and trying to give them a Book of Mormon. I started knocking on doors, doing anything I could to show this elder that the Lord would provide someone if we worked hard and I was doing it all in a fun spirit. He was basically laughing the whole time. 

We talked to a good number of people and handed out a couple Book of Mormons and it was around 8:30 and we had to meet up with some other missionaries. And so I told him if he gave out one more we could go back. Right then a car was driving towards us and then started to flip a u turn in front of us. I said to him just watch, that the car was going to stop and that we were going to be able to talk to them and he was like no way man and sure enough they stopped. It was a less active woman and so we talked to her a bit and got her info and then the elder tried leaving the Book of Mormon on the car and I grabbed it and gave it back to him and so we took off again in search of more people. Finally, right outside their apartment we met a guy and he had Mormon friends and had already read some of the Book of Mormon before. We had a really good spiritual lesson on the street and gave him the Book of Mormon.

Well, the story doesn’t stop there. When we got back to the apartment the missionaries we were waiting for still weren't there and so we sat on this ledge outside and waited for them and a good number of people walked by and we talked to them. But a couple of girls had walked by us and they were locked out of their apartment. Ten minutes later, I walked over to them and asked to borrow their phone to call the other elders and it died as I was calling. And so these two ladies started talking to us and oh man was it interesting, haha. They told us that if we ever have any parties to just invite them over. We proceeded to tell them that we are Mormon missionaries and we don’t party. We just share a message about Christ and his love. And so we started talking to them and gave them each a Book of Mormon. I read Helaman 5:12 to them also, but then this one girl was really trying to flirt with us and was just going crazy so we just booked it out of there. You have got to be careful in Vegas, I guess!

I hope you all have a great week and that all goes well! Love you all!

Elderrrrrr Clarrrrrrrk (I was rolling my Rs)