Date
January 6, 2019
Area
Roosevelt
Companion
Elder Gurney
Last Full Week of Mission
*Gasp* This week is my last full week as a missionary. Sad. Well I guess that means it is time to do as much finding and teaching as possible, so that I can leave a lot of people for the missionary replacing me to teach. Excuse me while I go make Satan uncomfortable with the amount of work getting done. Also just so you all know, we are allowed to email tomorrow on new years day.
Monday: Christmas eve! Our district wanted to go ice skating but the ice skating rink was closed. However, I knew the manager when I used to serve in Vernal. His name was brother Stradinger. Elder Otis and I had dinner with him a few times. We caught each other up on what has happened since February then eventually got to the subject of ice skating. To make a long story short, we decided it can't be done today. We went to play zone sports where we played volleyball. I also ended up playing a game called Escape Room The Game with Elder Rowe and Elder Lo. We then went to the Price family where after dinner we got to perform in a talent show. My time was limited to the point where I couldn't do my storytelling talent, so I instead made a parody of the song I'm Still Standing in which I used all 14 Christmas Hymns found in the 1985 edition of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Hymnal. It turned out pretty well, the only thing that could have made it better was if I was a better singer. Elder Gurney for his talent did magic tricks and all sorts of juggling. Me and him even began to juggle to each other with one hand. Yay! We then went to the home of Kyle, Nathan, and Boyet. Here we had a second dinner and shared a Christmas message with them all. We ended the evening with a bon fire with our district. Actually they started without us and when we got there we saw that they were having a hard time starting it. I decided to help out and after a few minutes we got a small fire going. However, because the wood was wet and lack of burnable material, the fire couldn't last long.
Tuesday: Christmas Day! Yay! Merry Christmas! Today I was grateful for the opportunity to remember and celebrate my Savior. I love him greatly and am thankful for the atonement he has made for me, my family, and everybody else. Our mission President gave us permission to sleep in until 8am as a gift. We woke up 7:30am though because we needed to go to a members home for breakfast. Don't worry, we were invited to all the homes of the people we visited. This family was named the Ross family. We had breakfast with them and they gave us presents to open. We got home at 11am to open our gifts from our families and friends. At 12pm we got to video call our families home. Yay! It was strange to be talking about my going home plans. I could also tell my brothers were excited that I was coming home. This was based on them beating each other up, being strange, and other signs. You know, guy stuff. We then got together with our District and played board games until 6pm. We then had dinner with Elder and Sister Thomas and their family. After that our District gathered together and played more games.
Wednesday: Today was rather boring. Our two lessons both cancelled. I also had to take week 5 of My Plan which wanted me to make plans for dating when I get back home *Sigh*. Dating is something I have been dreading. I will still do it since the consequences are me finding someone to marry. Yay! Moving on with our day, we mostly had to work on Areabook and finding today.
Thursday: Today was sad. Four of our five appointments cancelled. We had the baptism interviews for Boyet, Nathan, and Kyle. Nathan and Kyle passed their interview! However, Boyet wanted to postpone his baptism until the summer when his third son comes to the United States. Sad. We Weekly planned today because Friday would be busy. Elder Gurney accidentally lost his phone.
Friday: We recovered Elder Gurney's phone. He left it at the Murray's by accident. All of our lessons cancelled today. We went finding and I had to prepare two talks for church on Sunday.
Saturday: We had the baptisms of Kyle, Nathan, and Janelle happen today! Yay! We also got to attend the baptism for Lydia, a granddaughter of Elder and Sister Thomas. Elder Gurney got to attend a baptism over Skype, from his previous area. After dinner we spent time preparing talks and had to prepare for our Valiant 11 class we will be teaching tomorrow. We prepared a lot of object lessons for them.
Sunday: At first I thought it was a bad day, but then I realized it wasn't. We confirmed Janelle, Nathan, and Kyle today. Yay! We then had to quickly go to the Roosevelt 1st ward to speak. We knew in advance this was happening so we warned the Bishopric in advance. They picked long hymns to sing and had a returned missionary give her homecoming talk to stall for time. We got there in time to speak. We then had to do temporary exchanges with Elder Ford and Elder Zinn since they also had a confirmation and speaking in a ward at the same time. I went with Elder Zinn to the confirmation while Elder Ford and Elder Gurney went to speak. After that we went to the Roosevelt 5th ward to speak as well. We stayed after speaking then went to teach the Valiant 11 class. We then had dinner and did a lot of finding after that.
Overall, the week was awesome! Sadly our mission didn't reach its goal of 200 baptisms. Sad. This will be the last week I have to give it my all. Time to get serious.
For pictures I have two of me with my wrapped presents, two of me with them opened, a drawing of Elder Gurney and I, two pictures of me in front of Elder and Sister Thomas nativity, two pictures of us at the baptism of Nathan and Kyle, and three of me and my family while video calling. I would have a picture of us at the baptism of Janelle, but her Mom hasn't given us any. Sad.