Dear family and friends,
It's great to get mail again! Garit, both sets of grandparents and one of my MTC teachers have written me this week. Life is good! There have been a few things this week that have made life interesting that I would like to share with you all.
The first little bit started with last Monday after p-day ended. Elder Ware and I were biking on our way to an appointment and we get pulled over by this random car. My first thought was that it was a member probably asking us if we needed a ride then I was hoping she'd be a golden investigator again. It turned out that it was a member named Aimee (who I've never seen before so I'm guessing she's in a different ward than the ones Elder Ware and I cover) who happened to work for Domino's Pizza. She asked us if we had a dinner appointment. Believe it or not this was one of the few times during the week that we didn't have one so we said no and she took down our orders. After that she asked for our address and said that we'd only have to pay a $5 tip to the driver and that was it. So after our appointment, which I'll talk about in a minute since that was actually pretty eventful, we each got a free large 3 topping pizza plus free cinnamon bread! Elder Ware doesn't like sugary stuff so he gave his cinnamon bread to me which means that I got TWO free cinnamon breads! That was awesome! I totally wrote about that little incident in my journal! The appointment we were on our way to was an appointment with a part member family that our bishop recently contacted. The husband's a non-member and the way is less active. They are known as the Howell family. We set a baptismal date with Brother Howell for September 10th. Unfortunately Brother Howell's not golden. In fact he's the polar opposite of golden. He smokes, drinks, doesn't believe in the Joseph Smith story and slipped four disks in his back which makes coming to church difficult. He doesn't believe that he can be baptized by September 10th. We've got our work cut out for us don't we? I haven't dealt with a non-golden investigator who committed to a baptismal date. Usually my investigators either get baptized or they get dropped. I'm not looking forward to this but I have faith in the Lord.
Another interesting fact about this past week is that I went on exchanges with two different missionaries for two days in a row. For those of you who aren't acquainted with missionary work we missionaries switch companionships every now and then so that we can learn from one another. What will usually happen is that one missionary will go into the other missionary's area and the missionary who's staying plans all the activities for the day. Exchanges only go for one day each. So I took over the area for 2 days in a row! That was pretty fun! Allow me to share some insights about the missionaries I went on exchanges with:
On Friday I went on an exchange with Elder Cecil. He's from Santa Cruz (Yeah another California missionary!) and he's been out for 16 months. His first area was Cottonwood, just like mine (except back then it was known as Cottonwood/Sedona; by the time I got there Cottonwood had two extra wards which were the wards I worked in) and he was companions with Elder Mortimer, my trainer. Elder Cecil, like me, is a bigtime fantasy enthusiast (to say the least) so we had a lot to talk about.
On Saturday I went on exchanges with Elder Barrett, one of my zone leaders. (For those unacquainted with missionary work let's just say that he's a missionary who's also one of my leaders.) Elder Barrett is from Alberta, Canada and he's also 26. He already had his career lined up and his own place when he left to go out on his mission. He came out right before I did in mid-September of 2010. As far as I know we have three missionaries from Canada in our mission and he's one of them. He loves the great outdoors and he did a lot of hunting before he came out. The scouting program doesn't exist in Canada but he got the "Queen's Venture" award which is the equivalent of the Eagle Scout. He got most of his guns and bullets in the mail. I thought Canada had stricter gun control laws, but apparently not all of their laws are so strict if he can do that. I once asked him if went through a culture shock when he came down here but he said the only major difference in cultures is that everybody here uses WAY more ranch dressing than in Canada. Interesting.
Chris Brown's been sick this week so he haven't been able to see much of him. Ricky's been going to the YSA (young single adult) ward so we don't get to see him much anymore. He says he's looking for another job since his boss is overworking him to the max. We've been working a lot with the YSA elders because both Ricky and Chris are single plus one of the less actives that we're working with is single as well. (She's living with her mom in one of our ward boundaries that's why we've been teaching her.) We're still trying to coordinate our teaching visits with the YSA elders so that both Ricky and Chris get the new member discussions with someone from our ward and someone from theirs. It's been a little bit of a hassle but it'll get done. The YSA elders have been to both of our baptisms which is neat so Elder Ware and I have gotten to know them a little bit. They're neat missionaries.
So I got my haircut today and guess who cut it? Elder Ware! I wanted Sister Wright to do it (she normally cuts my hair) but Elder Ware wanted to and got offended when I made a joke about not trusting him. He did a pretty good job of cutting my hair actually and right now it's pretty short. Elder Ware and I have been pushing a lot of member-missionary work. We've been in a lot of homes with a bunch of different people in both wards.
So if you want to pray for me here are some things I could use help in:
- David Howell feeling the Spirit and us having the Spirit help us when we teach him.
- That the members will be able to feel the spirit of missionary work and that we'll be able to help them feel excited.
Love,
Elder Boothe
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