Dear family and friends,
This week's been a little bit slower now that Cyndi's baptism is over. On the day after I e-mailed you all we had a zone conference! It was amazing seeing Elder Mortimer and the Cottonwood elders again! We took some pictures after the meeting was done. Elder Mortimer and Elder Bell switched companions so Elder Bell's previous companion, Elder Vaughan (the elder with an interesting haircut not to Elder Mortimer) is now Elder Mortimer's companion just like I'm Elder Bell's companion when Elder Mortimer used to be my companion. Because I'm now part of Elder Bell's "posterity" we had to take a picture of all the elders that Elder Bell trained that were at the zone conference.
For those of you who are reading this and have never served on a mission before (for those of you who have served a mission you can skip this paragraph since you already know how this goes) what happens when you first get into a mission is that you are "trained" by a more experienced missionary who shows you the ropes. He's officially called your trainer but other missionaries would refer to him as your "daddy" because it's like you are being born into the mission. Inexperienced missionaries are called "greenies". You're considered a "greenie" for 3 transfers (18 weeks) and if you get transferred (which means you get moved to a different area) after your first area you still have to be trained. The missionary who then trains you is referred to as either a "step-trainer" or your "step-daddy". Even when you're an experienced missionary your trainer is still referred to as your "daddy". So Elder Mortimer was my trainer/is my "daddy" and Elder Bell is my "step-trainer/step daddy". Whenever a missionary is in a zone conference with other missionaries that he's trained missionaries will often get together and take "posterity pictures" meaning pictures of said missionary and all the other missionaries that he's trained.
That's what happened during the zone conference. Elder Bell took a picture of his "posterity". He says he's trained 7 missionaries (including me) and of those 7 missionaries he's "step-trained" 2 of them. Not all of his "children" were there at the zone conference. It was really cool nonetheless. I asked Elder Mortimer about some of our investigators in Cottonwood and Elder Vaughan asked me about some of our investigators. We also got new phones which is why there's a picture of a phone on the blog. It's big news in the life of a missionary. The texting keyboard looks really cool and our numbers are still in our phones!
Right now we're trying to find new people and while we currently don't have an investigator with a baptismal date we do have a progessing investigator! His name is Andy Manning and he came to church yesterday! He was even early. He stayed for two hours and he liked church. He currently works in the military as an air force inspector. I think what he does is inspect jets. Yeah I need to get to know him a little bit better. He's been keeping up on his reading assignments which is cool and we're still trying to figure out what he needs exactly. We learned that he's quitting smoking on his own. There's a really cool story behind that.
So his dog got sick so had to take it to the vet and as he's waiting outside the room he said he prayed and told God that he'd "take the next step" in coming closer to Him if his dog lived. As soon as he opened his eyes he saw a "No Smoking" sign. So ever since then he's decided to not smoke. Pretty cool huh?
Oh and before I forget I just got back from doing a zone activity. So every missionary in our "zone" (which is a specific area where a bunch of missionaries serve within a mission) came up and we had a volleyball tournament. My team got all the way into the semi-finals before we lost. I did pretty good myself. The highlight though is that we got to play against our mission president's team, AND WE WON! I led our team to victory on that one. I served the ball in the no-man's land and they couldn't figure what what to do. I think we got 9 out of our 14 points just from my serves. BOO YEAH! Not only did President Beck play but Sister Beck was on the same team as well. Oh and the APs played too. The team we lost to had one of our APs who I think is either 6'5 or 6'6. Afterwards we played basketball and then got dressed and did this. Pretty cool.
I love you all,
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