Fighting Trunkiness

Elder Jeffery is doing well, he's been getting/I've been giving him a lot of attention lately because it was his birthday yesterday and he's going home soon. So I tell everyone and they get excited for him and ask all about it. Elder Jeffery is terribly trunky, but honestly it's been good because I've been able to use it to get him to do more than he usually would. I tell him it's your last week, I know we've only had 1 person at church this last transfer, but we're gonna shoot for 6 for your farewell. It's been fun to use him leaving as motivation to make this his most hard-working week.

I have no idea about Thanksgiving plans. I haven't heard anything about Singapore, so I imagine this Wednesday will go by and I will still be here until at least next transfer. It's okay though because speaking English is easy. If I stay, I hope I get to stay in Ceres. Also, I hope I get an awesome trainer who can show me how to be the most effective missionary as possible.

We still had tons of cancellations this week, but not as many. I think we had 5 or 6 cancel, but we had 5 friend lessons that happened, and 3 of them we had members come help. We also had 11 lessons with members. Apparently there is an area directivie where we have to have a member lesson everyday at 8pm unless we have a friend lesson. It was tough to get them, but it's honestly such a blessing to end the night on a lesson. Plus, now we know a lot of the ward better and have more people willing to fellowship at our friend lessons.

The last two lessons we taught, Elder Jeffery seemed to just want to follow up on our last invitations and do the invitations with them if they hadn't already or discuss it if they had. I feel like that's great, but I want a lesson for afterwards and he seems to think the follow-up will take the whole 30-45 minutes. The follow up took like 5 minutes both times, and luckily I had a lesson plan for the next 30 minutes. So, I prepare and tell him what I think we should do but I let him make the final decision. That way I'm prepared either way if we need to change the plan part-way through.

Zay rescheduled twice this week, so we didn't have a lesson with him, but we have one scheduled which is nice.

We finally met with Carol again. She did her reading and we discussed it. We asked about her praying to know and she goes, "Well, I haven't needed to. So far, I believe everything, there's been nothing I've read that seems contrary from what I believe from the Bible, but if something comes up, I'll ask you guys and I'll pray about it." So that was like good and bad. She believes it all so far, but hasn't yet prayed and asked for a witness. We re-invited her to pray about it, asked her to come to church for Elder Jeffery's last week, and asked her to read a page each day until we meet next week. She accepted them all, and said she'd be ready for questions when we come next week.

We haven't been able to catch Aman, but we stopped by and met Sister Ensign. Aman lives with the Ensign family. The husband is a little anti and goes to another church now. Sister Ensign comes once a month because that's how often she doesn't have work during church. But she came to church this week. We didn't have a cell number for her and because of the primary program, the church time changed, so we wanted to let her know. So we called her husband, but he asked who it was and hung up when we said the missionaries. I texted him and told him we wanted to let his wife know about the time change for church because she had told us she planned on going. I asked him if he could let her know and he responded and said he would, which I felt was a miracle.

We finally had a lesson with Sarah and Keith, they are struggling financially. Neither of them work, Sarah gets a little bit a month for disablility and they share a trailer park home with some old dude and Keith's brother-in-law. It's kinda crazy to me how some people live. People don't understand that credit cards should not be used if you can't pay them, and that a lot of things that ask for your info in return for a bunch of free money is not real. I wish our ward were big enough to provide self-reliance classes or something for them. They did come to church this week which is awesome. They actually came to both hours because Sister King, a lady in the ward that came to fellowship for this lesson, told Sarah that she was teaching in Relief Society so Sarah had to come and answer her quesitons.

It's funny you mention Isaac (Jaxon's good friend and fellow wrestler from high school) is the AP because I was telling you last week how Elder Mariner reminded me of Isaac and this week he got called to be the AP. (He also told me Elder Mariner is being recruited by the Air Force Academy for football and so they will be there together after their missions.) It was really sad though because he was one of my zone leaders and I was going to go on exchange with him next week but now he's an AP and I won't be going with him.

Challenge - My Chinese is suffering. If we are super busy or have extra training it's always my language study time that gets thrown out the window because my companion doesn't have a language to study, so if we don't have an extra hour, I don't get much language time in. It's very sad.

Good News - I went on another exchange this week. Exchanges are awesome and I always accomplish so much more on an exchange and the following few days because they change up how you do things and get you out of routine. Also you learn a lot of cool methods other missionaries find effective. I was on exchange with Elder Mangum and we found a guy named Wayne who seems super prepared to receive the Gospel. Also, he once again instilled in me that no matter what my companion wants to do, I need to talk to everyone and that if I do, I will have people to teach.

Miracle - Our mission president reminded the mission of the area directive I mentioned, which I had never heard about. It's so amazing. Ending each night on the spiritual high of a lesson is the best. Plus we're getting to know the ward so much better.

I don't think I've mentioned Marquita, she reached out to us and asked to meet. We've taught her two lessons now. The doctrine of Christ, and the Restoration. She is very humble and willing to learn. Apparently she read something about blacks and the priesthood and was concerned, we assurred her we are all children of God and believe each of us have the same divine potential. The blessings of the temple and priesthood are now available to everyone according to their faithfulness. She has most recently been invited to read a page a day from the Book of Mormon and Pray to know if it is true.

Love you all!

Elder Wardle