Week 4 "Down to the Valley"

Sounds like a super cool week for you guys, what with a surgery AND a family picnic! I don't know why you didn't send pictures of Dallin's date though so I could rate her on a worldly scale. That's disappointing.

I'm pretty sure it would be okay to send Grandpa's talk. We listen to talks on drives sometimes, but they're all from apostles and general authorities. But all of those apostles and general authorities knew and loved Grandpa, so it's gotta be okay.

So yeah, I heard about Robin Williams on Tuesday morning, and that day was all downhill from there. Okay, I'm kinda sorta maybe half-joking and stuff or whatever, but it was a harder week than my first couple.

We've been teaching a lot of cool people this week. We've got Matt and Gloria, an unmarried couple in their 60's. Matt was baptized as a kid but has been to prison and stuff. Gloria's not a member and just arrived four months ago from North Carolina after she and Matt met on the internet. They've both been coming to church and have good testimonies, but they need to get married and give up their 20 cigarettes they each smoke every date. They're cutting down on smokes, but they supposedly can't get married until they move all of Gloria's stuff back from NC, which apparently is super expensive to do and they can't afford to do it right now. Most of the stuff she said she has to move here, though, sounds superfluous and I don't even know how any of it would fit in their little trailer home. A king sized mattress? 3 big screen TVs? A bunch of fancy furniture (apparently, Gloria's recently deceased husband was quite well off)? So... they've got to make some sacrifices, cuz we can't spend a lot of time on non-progressing investigators.

There's Madea Moreilles, a 40 year old married mom who we're teaching in a member friend's home. We showed her the Restoration video, and she clearly believes everything. The spirit was super strong, but when we asked her to be baptized, she said no. She doesn't feel like a good enough person with the grudges she's holding from her past and stuff, so that sucked. She still came to church though, so that was good.

Mario's staying strong. I don't think I mentioned that his dad doesn't want him to be baptized until he's gone to church for a year, so that's no good, but we're trying to speed that along. Anyway, we accompanied him to mutual on Wednesday where we played ultimate frisbee, so that was fun.

We taught a lady named Kristina (sic) Schwabb this week. We visited her last week and she invited us to come back because she enjoys hearing about other religions and finding out how much they align with her own. We were hoping to teach her and her whole family, but it turned out to just be her, and she was ready with her bible and a notebook for notes. It could have gone well anyway, but the member we brought with us kept trying to give real evidence that the Book of Mormon was true in the bible, and that led to some serious bible bashing between Kristina and our member. The spirit just kinda flew out the window. But we're going back there this week (with a different member).

On Thursday, we taught some seminary classes. The seminary teacher here heard our talks last Sunday and enjoyed them so much, he had to have us visit his classes. It was really fun, and it was great to see the expression all of the senior boys' faces when I told them I had been in seminary just 3 months ago. A lot of them realized they need to get their lives together.

 On Friday night, we drove down to the valley (where Nephi has "up north", St. Johns has "the valley"). One of Elder Denham's past converts was receiving her endowment in the Mesa temple on Saturday, and we got to go with her. That was super awesome to be in the temple where Grandma and Grandpa were sealed and to see how grateful people are to the missionaries that taught them. We stayed the night at some other elders' apartment in Scottsdale, and I met a guy serving here from Tuscon. He admitted that he was quite mad when he opened his call.

 So those are some of the things we did this week. Mom, you may have gotten a text last night with a picture of me and Elder Denham. A member (I can't remember her name) likes to take pictures of the missionaries here and send them to their parents. She had her teenage daughter send this one though, and we told her the caption to put with the picture: "Swag."

I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

Here's the crawdad I caught on the camping trip

and me and Elder Denham sucking them brain juices out