WEEK 38: Working hard

This week has been pretty solid! A storm has been passing through Bowling Green, which has made everything really nice and cool, except for when Elder Horsley got a flat tire and we had to walk our bikes back a mile in the pouring rain. Besides that it's been really good! That same day playing a bit of pros ball I split one of my pairs of pants and ruined them. And also one of my shoes came completely apart. WE STILL BEAT THEM. Even with a split pair of pants and a ruined shoe.Interestingly enough they didn't split because I've gotten fatter, it's because my thighs have gotten pretty big with all of this biking and running like 3 miles every morning. What a day. 

We are teaching a couple member referrals currently and they are all super cool people. We are teaching a lady from China who has no Christian background and she is so sweet! We are also teaching a members boyfriend, and another members close family friends. I've never had on my mission before members who invite their friends to learn more. Usually members look at missionary work as something that only the full time missionaries do. So it's been awesome to see that the members in our ward are being so involved! 

The tiny Filipino lady is ofelyia a person we are teaching. She a spunky old grandma who throws shade at everyone, it's the best!  Elder Horsley is such a hard worker and a fun companion to have. I'm sure he thinks I'm a weirdo but hey you win some you lose some right.  

We met this college student named Cassie who is super nice, and we've been able to teach her about the book of Mormon and the restoration. We taught her that she could pray for help with her studies and for understanding when reading the scriptures. And that night she texted us and told us how grateful she was that we came over and taught her about that. It was really cool to see that someone was actually excited and grateful for the opportunity to learn about God. 

Our district leader has been making us banana bread for every district council and it's dang good! I'm going to have to get the recipe. And today we are headed back out to the alpaca farm so I'm way excited for that! Well the alpaca farm was dope as usual. The lady who runs it fed us a fat lunch and we did some service and threw the old pig skin around a bit. Good times for sure. That's about it for me this week! Sorry it's been a while. Stay Blessed

WEEK 37: Slice of humble pie?

Hey guys! It was good to hear from you all! This last week has flown by so quick. I guess being a zone leader all of a sudden makes you way busy and I don't know why but I didn't expect that. Elder Horsley is a pretty dope guy. He's like 6'4 so that's pretty cool. Since we are zone leaders we get extra miles  so we can drive to the other Elders apartment in our area. Its way sick! I've already lost like 4 pounds so that's fun, this transfer we are just gonna slice off that weight so I'm excited for that. Elder Horsley definitely knows how to have a good time but also how to work way hard. He loves fishing to so that's a huge perk. We went fishing today( first time for me since I left on my mission) and it was heaven. We didn't catch anything huge but it was just so fun. I caught a little pumpkin seed panfish that is a cool looking fish. Hopefully we will get to go fishing every p day now.

The work here in this area is going good. Elder Horsley does missionary work a little different than I do so that's gonna take some adjusting. Its also weird not to be training anyone anymore and to be more equally yoked I guess. Not so stressful when you don't feel like you are pulling most of the load. It looks like you guys had a way fun time up in bear lake! I was glad to see everyone's smiling faces for sure! We also got to go do some service at an alpaca farm this week and it was a blast, we got to throw some hay bales around and mess with the alpacas a bit so it was a good time😆 these next couple weeks are going to be pretty crazy because elder Bowen( he's a general authority) is coming to visit the mission. And we have a ton of exchanges to go on so that's exciting. I'll just share one experience, the other day it was like 8:45 pm and I wanted to drive back to the a
apartment and start doing the paperwork side of missionary work, and Elder Horsley convinced me that we needed to stay out for a little while longer and talk to more people. So I did it, and had a bad attitude about it cause I didn't think we were gonna find anyone. But sure enough we ended up finding two new people to teach, so that was a bit humbling and I felt like a scrub after having a bad attitude about it. But it's cool that the Lord will always lead us to the people as long as we just trust him and do what he says. I love you guys and hope you have a good week!

WEEK 36: One more time in BG

Hey y'all, hope everyone has been doing good, just wanted to shoot an email out to update everyone on what's been going on.

We got transfer calls this Tuesday and I'll be staying in Bowling Green for another transfer and receiving Elder Horsley and we will be the zone leaders. My greenie who just finished training, Elder Wales, will be going to a small town in Tennessee to train a new missionary, with the help of an older missionary.

I was kinda hoping for a change of scenery since this will be my 5th transfer here. But there is a lot of potential in this area so I can't really complain that much. We just put a guy named Alex on date for baptism on Monday. He is from Tanzania and speaks swahili and French and a tiny bit of English. But we have been making it work. He is so dope, he's way short and always smiling. He's helping me learn a bit of swahili. It's a hard language that's for sure. But we have lots of swahili people here so it's nice to know at least the basics. I guess bowling green is a designated safe city for refugees so that's why we have so many here.

Besides that everything is still going pretty good, every week we find more apartment complexes to tract, I swear there is a new complex built like every week. I'm excited to be a zone leader but a little nervous to. I only got to be a district leader for one transfer so I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm excited tho because now I get to go on exchanges with the aps and one of the aps Elder Bollinger trained me, so seeing him again is gonna be sweet! It's starting to cool off a bit here and the temps are mostly in the 70s and the humidity isn't to bad so fall is coming. I hate all the bugs here tho. The cicadas are so loud it's rediculous.

Also the new church history book that came out called Saints is way good. I read it all already and it was sick. It's all I did for like a week during our dinner and lunch breaks since the members don't feed us to often. That's about it for me tho. Love you guys and hope your all doing well!

WEEK 35: Bar burgers are the best

Not to much to talk about this week. No word on transfers yet. Not a whole lot has changed. We had a good exchange this week with the zone leaders. It really helped me to learn how I can be a better missionary.

We also had a member accidently take us to a bar for dinner. I had the best burger I've ever had in my life there. It was fantastic. Love y'all and hope ya have a good week.

WEEK 34: Responsibility

Hey family!

It's good to hear from you guys, yeah I'm still in Bowling Green probably till half way through September. This week has been pretty good, it's been a long week for sure and we've been biking a lot. It's been hot hot hot. We have some baptisms this weekend so I'm pumped about that. I have been doing a lot of swahili lessons lately, it's a really hard language to understand but I'm picking up words here and there. Just the basics for sure, maybe Bowling Green will get some swahili missionaries sometime soon.

Being district leader has been interesting, we have these calls that we have to be on Monday night's and this week me and Elder Wales totally forgot about it and so we made everyone wait for us before they started. When we were driving around we saw these two guys larping, they were fighting with big old foam swords, it was so funny! I almost crashed our car! We also have an senior missionary couple in our district.

The new announcement from President Nelson about the churches name is going to be interesting for us for sure, nobady here in the south knows our church full name, they all only know the nicknames. ( side note/funny story) we went to a Christian store today, and they literally sell anti Mormon literature in a Christian store😂😂 how Christian. Anyhow the little Africans we are teaching are getting baptised this saturday!! Crispin and Nadine are sick, they are so fun!!

They thought it was funny in our last lesson to smack lder Wales in the back of the head a bunch. It was way funny! Besides that yeah not much, I'm thinking this will be my last transfer here but we will see, I'm really excited about grandma going to the temple! I wish I could be there but I know it will be an awesome experience!! Love you guys and hope you have a good week!!

WEEK 33: Speedy delivery

Hey family!! It's good to hear from you guys! This week went by super quick. It just seems like the weeks are flying along. This week we had a zone conference where we got new tiwis in our cars. Tiwi is a computer device that in real time coaches us on how to drive. If we get to many warnings we get a violation which goes on our driving record. Also at zone conference we had David Archuleta talk with us and sing us some of his songs. Glorious was way cool in person. I think he's better live than like his recordings. He is one of the most humble guys I've ever met and he has a really cool back story. I'll attach pictures below. I hope to serve in one of the wards he's in that would be way cool.

Besides that not a whole lot has happened. We will have some more baptisms this next weekend so that's exciting. I've had to do a few swahili lessons lately and they are so hard, I can use Google translate to speak it but Idk what they are saying back😂. Translators are so helpful.

The red rocket, my new bike, is way fast! All the gears work it's so exciting, I haul but around this city. I've been here for quite a while now so it's starting to get a bit repetitive but feel like home. Today for p day we have been playing some friendly sting pong which has been way fun, and we are gonna go get some new couches from a senior missionary couple who is leaving. Thursday we are heading down to the temple to do baptisms for the dead with our recent convert Chris. Love that guy. The gospel is helping him get his life on track.

In my last interview with President he said he'd need me as a zone leader soon so we will see what happens. I think this might be my last one in this area. Me and Elder Wales are still working hard and finding lots of people to teach, they just don't always speak English which is hard. Besides that mom was pretty much right when she said it's probably like ground hog day. Once again everything sounds like it's going good back home! Happy birthday to Jake, 22 wow!! Time flies, 😂😂 he'll probably have like 4 kids by the time I get back. Well I love you guys! Bye bye