Temple Trip and Homemade Oreos

Dear family and friends,

                    WOW! This week was amazing! I'm so excited to share some of the wonderful things that happened! I just came back from the Mesa Temple visitor's center with one of my investigators: Angelica. Angelica was one of the first people I've met when I came into this area and she holds the record now for "Investigator That I've Worked With For the Longest Time" (Whoa Whoa Whoa for the longest... Who can name the song?). Seriously everyone else I've worked with either gets baptized or dropped. Anyway she's been going through A LOT of struggles in her life and the progress that she's made since I've met her is INSURMOUNTABLY HUGE! This is why I came on a mission: Changing lives and bringing people to Christ. Speaking of changing lives I have a funny story to share with you:

                     This week Elder Adona and I introduced Angelica to a 15 step stop smoking program. One of the steps in the program is that the participant crushes a pack of cigarettes. Well Angelica doesn't have a pack, she just gets it from someone else so we were trying to come up with ideas about getting her a pack. Angelica's mom also smokes, and she knows that Angelica's trying to quit, so she's not going to give her pack to Angelica so we're in a tough position. This is also a really important part of the program so we weren't going to skip it if we could. We decided to have Angelica buy the pack because it's going to look REALLY bad (and really weird too) if one of us buys it but she forgot to bring her wallet when our ride came to pick us up (we had the lesson in a member's home). We're almost at the member's home when I brought it up and Brother Greer pulled over. Brother Greer didn't have his wallet with him and Angelica didn't have her wallet with her so now one of us had to buy it. I was quivering. Talk about a moral dilemma. As a member of the church one does not naturally encourage people to break the Word of Wisdom. Even if you don't smoke you still don't want to encourage the cigarette companies by buying their stuff. It's even weirder when you're a missionary and it's blatantly obvious what you believe in. At the same time though you want to do everything you can to help your investigators too. So my companion bought Angelica a pack of cigarettes. Yeah that definitely ranks on the Top 10 Most Awkward experiences of my life. I felt so evil and unclean afterwards. Brother Greer gave us a hard time too. He was joking of course and understood the situation but still... Anyway the program gets the person to quit smoking in a week (and it actually works too. The sisters who also work in the ward I'm working in got two of their investigators to quit in a week using that program) and so far this is Day 4 for her. So far the program's working so it was for a good cause. 

 

                    So more about the temple: We drove down there with a recent convert who just got the Melchiezedek Priesthood yesterday and we drove Angelica down there. We (meaning me, Elder Adona and James, the recent convert who drove us to the temple) were pretty excited to go, Angelica being ho-hum about it. We got there and watched the new Joseph Smith movie and that was a pretty amazing experience! The Spirit was so strong there! After that we saw the family walk-through which melted my heart away and totally affected Angelica too. She loved it. When all was said and done she told us that she wanted to go back! That made my day! We took pictures in front of the Christus which was awesome! Overall I feel very spiritually refreshed and excited about going to work this upcoming week. On the way here Elder Adona, James and I busted out with "Amish Paradise". It was too epic for mortal tongue to describe.  

                We also made homemade Oreo's. Ask Dad for the pictures because I send them to him. These things were as big as your face I guarantee it. They also taste a MILLION times better. There's no way that I would want an oreo from the store. The homemade ones are cheaper, better and bigger. I'm sold. One of the missionaries that I live with is trying to lose weight and Elder Adona and I act like food devils and we tempt him ALL THE TIME. It was hilarious watching him succumb each and every time. I still get a really big kick out of it. This week I'm going to try making some thing I haven't had in a while: Funeral Potatoes. I love Elder Adona's cookbooks. They're awesome!   

                The sister missionaries who have been working in the same ward as us are leaving which is sad. By Wednesday we'll be taking over their area again. Brother Torres and the bishop cried about it. Half the ward's in mourning. Well our work is about to double as will be our area. I'm looking forward to it although the sisters had a lot of weirdo's in their area. Still, I love working and I love you.

Love,

Elder Boothe