Monday March 18, 2019
Dear Mom,
This week was another good one involving Zone Conference, an FHE, Interview with President, an exchange, star gazing, and a great Sunday.
Monday was a goo P-day and it was fun to talk on video call over Facebook Messenger with the fam! I loved also getting Rachel and Rebekah on there too :) That evening we went to the hospital and helped a member give a blessing to a lady that was not doing so well. We then visited some people.
Tuesday was Zone Conference. The AP's picked us up and we headed over to the Denham Springs Stake Center. We had a great Zone Conference with some really great and funny presentations. We had some really good discussions and also some great role-plays and then we had lunch. President then talked to us and we had some more great presentations. We then stayed until the AP's drove us back. We were ble to visit with other missionaries for a while. Elder Carson, who is still serving in the New Iberia (my last District) brought his Frisbee so we threw that around in the gym for a while. The AP's then drove us back and we drove over to the south part of our area and we followed up on a return appointment we made with a guy we had met in the street a little while ago. We had a great lesson with him and his friend and then we walked over to the apartment of a less active guy we have been visiting lately. His fam, who are not members, were there and we talked to them a bit and got to know them better than the previous short encounters would permit. His step-son was in the kitchen and randomly popped out asking us if we wanted to try a souffle that he had made. We said yes and he gave us some really good sweet potato souffle. We then talked with him for the next 30 minutes or more. He is a chef and he is only 19. Super cool guy.
Wednesday we worked out as usual and we took Henry (a member's dog) out on a walk as we have been doing for about a week. This member asked us to go over to his apartment every morning and night to feed his dog and take him out for a walk and to use the bathroom. It has been fun cause he is a cute little dog and he gets crazily excited whenever we open the door. We did some studies and ate lunch and then went to the church for weekly planning and interviews from President. It was good to talk to President, he is so awesome. We then drove to Gonzalez and visited some potential people to teach and cleared up some records for old addresses of members. We then went to a member's house for an FHE. It was the family of the return missionary that came to a lesson with us on the last Saturday. The family that she helped us teach came to the FHE and it went really well. We left so we could get home on time and they were all still there talking and having a good time.
Thursday we went to the Library in the afternoon so Elder Parker could figure out some stuff with his bank account. We also printed out some primary songs for some lessons we were to have. We then drove to a part-member family's house for dinner and a lesson. There was a lot of traffic so it took us about an hour instead of half an hour. They fed us some really good tacos and then we had a great lesson on facing fear. We then went to some appointments we had, a few fell through so we tracted a little around them and then we went to our last appointment which went really well.
Friday we had exchanges with the LSU Elders. I was with Elder Ritchie in their area (LSU Campus) and Elder Monson went with Elder Parker in our area. Elder Ritchie and I had some funny experiences. We biked to an area where we tried to contact some people and they weren't there but while there we met a dude in passing and scheduled a time to come back. We then went to another place to contact a guy and he wasn't there but his roommate drove up at that moment and eventually let us in. It took him a bit because he thought we were the Feds. So many people think we are the Feds which is really funny but I never met someone who was so convinced and skeptical. After talking for a bit and telling him at like three different times that we weren't the Feds, he let us in. We talked some more and he asked again like 2 more times. Then while in the middle of teaching about the Restoration, he talked about some stuff and then asked again and said "cause I got weed". He then went to his closet and brought it out to the table to role up a joint, lol! At that time his friend showed up too. We continued a little bit of conversation and then excused ourselves and set another time to come back. We walked outside and died laughing, he was a super funny guy and never has anyone straight up done something like that. It was pretty funny. we were then about to leave and we saw a girl struggling to do something at her car so we rode our bikes over and asked if she wanted help. Get this, she actually said yes! Not many people do that, it's kind of a rare occurrence, haha. We helped her put a protector on her seats for her dog and then she went and got her dog and we met it and then talked with her for quite a while. There were a lot of really cool connections, like her being form the same place Elder Ritchie was from, and her being a religious major, and being the President of the service group, and a bunch of other things. We had a good talk and then we biked back over to LSU Campus for a lesson with a recent convert. We read in the Book of Mormon and at the end we were talking about it being Elder Ritchie's B-day and Hughs, the recent convert, asked if we were doing anything special for his birthday, or if there were any events we were going to. Elder Ritchie said nothing planned yet but do you know of anything good? Hughs said yeah there are a lot. Elder Ritchie then clarified appropriate events. Hughs then counted like nine things and cancelled them off the list. That was really funny, we told him it was probably not the best idea to go to parties as missionaries, haha. But then he told us about a get together he was going to for those from Africa and stuff. He invited us to come and since he was going and there was going to be an investigator there, we made an appearance. We played an Uno game with them which was a lot of fun and then we went to the food court and got Smoothie King. We then changed and biked over to the soccer fields. Lucky for me, Friday night is soccer night where they play soccer with some people they are teaching and make more contacts. That was a lot of fun and we met some cool people. We then biked back home for the night.
Saturday we switched back in the morning and Elder Parker and I went to Branch Correlation at a member's house with the Sister Missionaries and the members fed us breakfast as usual. We then took out Henry for a walk and then did some studies. In the afternoon we drove down to Gonzalez and we had a great lesson with the same family that we had come to the FHE on Wednesday. We then knocked doors in a trailer park down there for a while and made some good contacts. We drove back up to the south part of our area and we had a few good lessons there. We also drove up to another part of our area to have a quick lesson with a family and invite them to church.
Sunday was really good. That family we invited to church on Saturday night came! All 6 of them:) They really enjoyed church and said they would come to the Easter Activity on Saturday and to church next Sunday. We then came home, ate lunch, did studies, and then drove up to the north of our area and brought our bikes with us. We made some visits and then biked from that place to another neighborhood and we had a good first contact lesson with a guy there. We then biked back to the car and drove back home. We then walked over to Brother and Sister Albert's apartment (the same people we have branch correlation with) because he invited us over to look through his telescope that night.
It was a pretty great week and this next week is going to be crazy because we have 3 exchanges!!! Until next week!
I love you Mom!!!
Love,
Elder Acton