Hello again! I had a fairly uneventful, but good second week. It went by super fast, so fast that I forgot to write this email on P-day. It's ok, as there's a little more for me to write about since we've gone through most of the week. This past Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a baptism. The baptism was for two children of the same family. It was a really neat experience to watch the father baptize his kids. Me and my companion were also able to participate in the laying on of hands to give those kids the Gift of the Holy Ghost. It was my first time participating in such an ordinance, and naturally it was kind of exciting. Me and Elder John live in an apartment with 2 other missionaries. However, one of those missionaries had to go home last week, so now we are in a trio covering two wards. As a result, last week was pretty busy as we had to mesh our schedules together. Not only that, we are getting 35 new missionaries next week, so we are getting ready to potentially split up or have more missionaries in our apartment. P-day in Texas hasn't been too eventful. To be completely honest, our district only really sits at the church building all day and plays frisbee or basketball, which is not quite up my alley. But that's alright, it's still fun to hang out with the other missionaries. However, one great thing I did this P-day was go to the local Daiso: a Japanese sort of convenience store. I bought a lot of treats I used to get when our family lived in Japan. It was a breath of fresh air for me. On my most recent P-day, we had a fun time carving pumpkins and hanging out at Cabellas. My district is filled with lovely people, and I'm grateful to get to know them more every day. I meant to write more for my second and third week, but to be truthful it's slow going here in Texas. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of stories from the relentless attempts at bible bashing to simply odd things I've seen throughout my day. The work is going slow in my zone, and at times it feels like I'm sitting here waiting for somebody to ask about the gospel. In light of this, the talk given this last conference titled: "God Will Do Something Unimaginable" by Dieter F. Uchtdorf resonates with me. One of my favorite quotes from the talk was "Perhaps we were still building with sandstone when granite was already available." While he was referring to something else in the talk, one way I look at this is to not be complacent with where we are when we can do more to reach our destination. Although it has felt as if I have done all that I can to further the work, upon reflection I have noticed that I was building my foundation out of sandstone. I took 10 minutes tonight to think and look at what more I could do to further my missionary purpose, and was able to find more than 5 things I could do right now. It's great to know I can do more, even if I may not see success immediately. If we take a moment to take a step back and ask "what more can I do?" we'll be able to build foundations of granite that will carry us to our goals and beyond. I know I have a long road to travel, and much more foundation to build, but I encourage everybody reading this to not be complacent with "good enough." Ich wünsche dir alles erdenklich Gute! Elder Wilhelm Japanese goodies...yum, yum, yum Elder Wilhelm and Elder Flake are on the left at the end. Landon Flake and Andrew were kid friends when we lived in Dupont, WA. These boys are in the same district and have gotten to do splits twice. What a small, small world! Awesome fish aquarium at Cabella's Sitting by the apartment pool during splits
Howdy!
I've just finished my first week on a mission in Fort Worth Texas. It was a blast, and if there's anything I've learned: southern hospitality is real, and I love it. A lot of events occurred throughout the week, many of them happening on the first day. After landing in Fort Worth, I got to meet plenty of wonderful people. I met the mission president, some of the other missionaries, and my companion: Elder John. It turns out that Elder John is from monument Colorado and is in the same stake as me back home. We never knew each other beforehand, but it's crazy to think of how small a world this is. Just minutes after meeting Elder John, and a few short hours after landing, we met our first street contact. His name is Lamar and his car broke down. He wasn't quite able to pay for a tow, so we helped him out with the difference and told him a little bit about our church and gave him a Book of Mormon. It was an interesting encounter to say the least. Shortly after, we met Elder John's old zone at a Mexican restaurant called Rosa's. Although the food was honestly mediocre, it was great to meet a bunch of new missionaries, even if I won't see them for at least 6 weeks as they aren't in the zone me and Elder John are assigned to. Not much else happened that day, except for driving dozens of miles in a cramped car to move into our new zone, trying to figure out how to communicate with the sisters who had the SIM card we needed (they are in quarantine for covid), moving in, dealing with a power outage, finding out that we didn't even have mattresses, and some other events. It was a fairly interesting day to say the least. On Thursday we were able to help a member begin to replace the floor of the second story of his deck on the lake behind his house. There were huge hornets about the size of my thumb flying around, which was super crazy to see. He supplied us with huge cans of some very intense hornet/wasp killer, which is quite literally acid. I mean I saw a hornet start melting a bit when I sprayed it with a generous helping of the hornet killer. While one of the missionaries attempted to kill a flying hornet with this spray, the wind blew it onto my arms which prompted a leap into the lake and a lot of scrubbing. Besides that event, it was a great project, and I was glad to help. So those are my two stories for the week, as random as they were. Me and Elder John have been able to become more acquainted with each other, and he's been a great trainer. We keep each other motivated to stay on task and stay focused on our missionary purpose. When we have time, we either sit by the pool at our complex or go to the lounge room which has a pool table and some other games. We really lucked out with the apartment situation, so I'm taking full advantage of this, as it's all downhill from here. I hope to have more stories to tell this upcoming week that don't involve getting sprayed with acid. While I haven't had too many spiritual experiences. I want to challenge you all to do these: love your neighbor; be a kind soul amidst the struggles the world is facing. Stay safe and have a wonderful week! Andrew |