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Well, sorry… But I really couldn’t come up with a witty title for this week’s update.

I’m also sorry that the email stuff on my site seems to have stopped working. I’ll probably still be updating the site, but as of right now, no one will be getting the email updates. Sorry about that.

Maybe I’ll be able to find a way to fix it, but until then, I don’t reckon that it will work.

Anyway, this week has been pretty good. We’ve been keeping busy with lots of lessons and whatnot, but really nothing too exciting happened. This is the week of Transfers, but both my companion and I are staying here, so that’s nothing really exciting.

So, yeah. There isn’t that much to say. We found an awesome family this week, and we’re also teaching a man who already has a testimony but that just needs to stop smoking. So, we’re excited about them. With any luck we’ll have some baptismal dates by next week.

But yeah, everything here is going decently. Wearing the sling is annoying, and my shoulder still isn’t feeling super-happy, but what can I do? Not too much.

Anyway, so that’s about it for the week.

101_0757.JPGThe sign, that is. I was totally confused as to how the right lane could turn left. So, if anyone could explain to me how that all works out, that would be greatly appreciated.

101_0769.JPGAnyway, aside from being horribly confused by that, this week has been pretty good. This week we had the baptism of Erik Molina, a little 9 year-old kid who really doesn’t understand much, but he and his mother wanted him to be baptized, so we did it. Anyway, the baptism this week was a lot more organized and went a lot smoother than the one last week.

In other news, we had an awesome ward activity here this weekend, run by none other than the missionaries. I thought that it was pretty cool, though not the most amazing one that I had ever been to. But, apparently, the Bishop told us that it was the best activity that the ward had ever had. So, yeah. That was pretty cool to find out.

This week I also received my sling. Hooray. Yeah, I have to wear it because my shoulder has still been hurting. So my parents sent it down overnight and I got it on Friday. But I’ve got to get it to stop hurting… It’s to the point where it’s interrupting the work at times.

Anyway, enough of that. I suppose that I’ll include a Spiritual thought this week, since I haven’t done that in awhile. So, this week I was reading in the book “Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: John Taylor.” I was reading about our agency and whatnot.

I know this isn’t anything new, but this time it really kind of hit me hard. We’re here on earth to be tested, right? We’re not here to see what we can get away with or anything like that. Every action could potentially influence our eternal happiness. Every single thought and word, too. Anyway, so we really get to choose where we go based completely on what we do.

I know that I, personally, would like to be as happy as I possibly can be for eternity. As it says in 2 Nephi 2:27, “Men are free … to choose liberty and eternal life… or to choose captivity and death…” Well, the way I see it, we chould be careful with what we do in every moment, so that we don’t get stuck with the whole “Captivity and death” option… That doesn’t sound too fun to me.

Oh, yeah… Also, it was 102 on Saturday. Great, isn’t it?

Anyway, have fun, everybody! Enjoy your week.

Well, hello again, everybody! This week has been rather exciting for me, I have to admit. First off, we had the Baptism of the Baeza family on Saturday. That was awesome.

I have to admit that I could’ve made it all more organized, because it was super-stressful, and I forgot to look for a Piano player until it was too late to find one… That and not realizing that they needed towels to dry off… Oh, yeah… And that I personally had to translate about half of the baptism one way or the other. (We tried to do the whole thing in English and Spanish) But there was an incredible Spirit there. And now I know what to do with all of that.

Apart from the baptism, not too much happened. We went to the temple this morning, which is always incredible. There is a spirit there that is nowhere else. Always when I’m there I have an incredible sense of peace.

I don’t want to be a complainer, but my shoulder still hurts. It’s no fun. The Physical Therapist says that the pain will probably get worse before it gets better. So, we’ll have to see. I hope not.

Anyway, we’ve got another baptism coming up this week, a 9-year old boy named Erik. He’s got some learning disorders, so it takes him absolutely forever to learn some things, but he’s got enough knowledge that he didn’t have a problem with the baptismal interview. Oh, and on that subject, I performed my first baptismal interview on Saturday, a quiet man who has an incredible testimony. That’s a great opportunity, to perform those interviews.

But, yeah… I can’t think of anything else right now, so I’ll probably be done now. Yup. I think so. G’day, everone!

Life is going rather well. My shoulder is still hurting an unnaturally large amount, but it all works out. Painkillers help, too. Plus, I started Physical Therapy this week, and they’ll hopefully be helping it to feel better.

As far as everything else goes, we wanted to do email yesterday but couldn’t because when we tried the church email was down. So, we’re doing it today. That, and yesterday I spent a lovely 4 hours in the Physical Therapy place waiting for the Doctor to be able to see me, because apparently I need an in-state doctor to authorize therapy. So, yeah. Anyway, we had a lovely hour of therapy followed by three of nothingness.

But yeah, it works out well enough.

In other news, we’ll have another baptismal date today. We’ve been waiting for permission from the Bishop to baptise a kid named Eric, who wants to be baptised. His mother also wants him to be baptised. The thing is, she was baptised about 4 years ago and was inactive for 3 of them. But now, she’s coming back into activity. The Bishop wanted her to be active before we baptise him. But he gave us the go-ahead on Sunday. So, we’ll be setting that up soon enough.

We’re also going to have that other baptism this week, the family of 3. That’s going to be superb. They had their interviews on Sunday, and with only mild complications, passed with flying colors.

But as you can see, the work moves on. Hopefully we’ll be able to set another couple of baptismal dates in the near future. There are many people here who have been well-prepared for the Gospel. So, it’s good stuff. Plus, the members here are amazing.

Oh, and next week we’ll probably be doing our P-day on Tuesday, because we’re going to go to the temple. That is a beautiful thing.

Have a great week, everyone!

Well, yeah, I’m back now. Not surprising, as I already informed all of you.

Everything is going rather well. I’m here in the heart of Mesa, and the temple is right across the street from my area. It’s a good area, and we had the opportunity to set three baptismal dates with a family yesterday. They’re super excited about the Church, and already have strong testimonies.

In other news, I got here on Thursday, and I was riding back to my area with the Zone Leaders (One of which is my good ol’ trainer, Elder Barrios), when they asked me, “When can we train you to be a District Leader?” My immediate response was, “I’m not a District Leader.” To which they responded, “Yes, you are.” Anyway, so I called President Watson that evening and he said, “Oh, yeah… Sorry I forgot to tell you that. Is that okay with you?”

Anyway, so I’m a District Leader now. We also had the opportunity to go to the Easter Pageant here on Friday night, which was pretty awesome. It’s actually the largest outdoor Easter Pageant in the world. There were thousands of people there, and it really was great.

As far as my Easter, it really wasn’t exciting. It was pretty much like any other Sunday, except that it was my first in this area. So, yeah. That, I guess, was good. It’s actually a Ward here, and it’s a strong one. I also participated in the Ward Choir (which is very, very small…) But yeah, it wasn’t the most exciting thing ever.

My companion is a very interesting person. Very, very interesting. He doesn’t like speaking Spanish, and he has this little way of imitating small things that I do and standing too close for comfort. But yeah, he’s willing to work hard most of the time, so that’s what’s important. Oh, yeah…. Last night, he pulled the whole “Why is it that you’re right and I’m wrong” thing on me. Anyway, that was pretty exciting. After that he pouted for round about 20 minutes.

But yeah, everything goes well. The hardest thing is being out of touch with everyone. I really like being able to call my Mom to ask her help, or to say, “I love you.” Speaking of which, I think I’ll do that right now.. Mom, I love you. Thanks for all that you do for me.

Well, there you have it. Everyone have a great week!

Well, here we go, everybody. I’m leaving early tomorrow to resume my mission. I suppose that I’m pretty excited about it, though I don’t think that I’ve yet completely realized that I’m heading back.

Anyway, it’s good stuff. I’ve had a good little ‘Spring break’ as we’ve called it. I’ve been able to revise my packing list, something that very few missionaries get the opportunity to do.

I’m pleased to report that my shoulder seems to be doing much better, and every day I get more motion back. I’ll still be doing Physical Therapy for quite awhile, though. So, truthfully, I don’t know exactly what else I need to say. Pretty much, I’m tired and still have packing to do, so I’ll probably be finishing this post and heading off to wrap up those last few things.

So, yeah. I’ll be heading off now. Thus concludes the last test of this system. If it doesn’t work now… It might not get fixed.

G’day

Hello everybody who may or may not be interested in my life in the mission field! I’d like to report that I’m now making this website that I will be able to use as my own lovely site for updating all the info and whatnot from my mission. It should be good stuff, I hope.

If all goes well, I should be able to send emails to my own site and have them posted here. Hopefully I can also work it out so that the site will send emails to everybody letting them know that I just updated the site. Anyway, it should all work out well enough. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to use this as well… I dunno. I’ll work it all out, though.

Anyway, so that’s what the deal is. I may, in the near future, decide to put up some of the older emails and whatnot that I sent out. You see, then I’d have a complete website chronicling my entire mission. So, I suppose that would probably be a pretty good idea. That, and I’ll be able to let people search through my posts and all that. Anyway, I think that this site is a good idea. I hope that it keeps doing its job well enough.

Well, here’s the weekly update. Some exciting stuff happened this week:

Well, I have to admit that this week has been pretty spectacular, with the exception of one thing that happened today. But, I’ll explain that a little it later on.

Anyway, this week I did very many exciting things. First of all, I met one of my brother’s fellow missionaries, and it happened in a pretty exciting way. My companion and I were walking in front of some houses when he asked me if I had ever seen Indiana Jones. Well, I, of course, responded, “Are you joking?” Anyway, shortly thereafter we started whistling the Indiana Jones theme.

After about a minute of that, we had a man behind us shouting at us. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, and looked like he had recently been lounging around in his house. Anyway, he came up and told us that he had been reading about the Tree of Life when he got annoyed that someone outside was whistling. Then he saw that it was us, and realized that he wanted a blessing. So, he went out to stop us. Anyway, he served in Spokane, Washington, where Ryan served, and Ryan was in his last zone before he left. So, that was pretty cool.

Anyway, we also did a ton of other exciting stuff, especially including having some incredible lessons, having a man who had no idea what he was talking about try to disprove the gospel, and had a man who was high on Cocaine give us the phone number of the Arizona Department of Workforce Resources, telling us sincerely that it was his.

But yeah, that about sums it up. Really good, fun stuff! But yeah, we have an investigator family who are very interested in everything about the church, and they’ve noticed differences in their home since we started visiting them. We plan to commit them to get married (yeah, they’re not married) soon, and then soon after to Baptism.

They’re great people, and they ask a ton of questions, which is always great!

Anyway, that’s all great good news.

As for some other news, regarding what happened this morning. I went to see an Orthopedic Specialist this morning, and, well, needless to say, he wasn’t very optimistic about my whole ‘wait until the end of my mission’ to have my shoulder operated on. So, we’ll see what happens with all of that. Keep praying.

Oh, yeah, we also went to the Temple on Saturday morning and I did my first session in Spanish! How great is that?

But yeah, that sums up the week! Everybody enjoy!

Guess what? Yesterday I was riding my lovely bike along the road, when I noticed that my pants had small bits of ice on them! I’m not sure whether it was just a few snowflakes or some hail, but at least there was ice falling from the sky in some way! It also apparently snowed in Phoenix yesterday. But Phoenix is far enough from Mesa that we didn’t get any reasonable amount (once again assuming that the small pieces of ice on my pants were snowflakes).

Anyway, I was pretty excited about that. Who knows, maybe there’s still a chance of getting some this year! I’ve been told by several people that this year has been colder than past years… So maybe there’s that chance.

But yeah. The work still goes well! This week we set two baptismal dates for the 10th of Feb. One of them was rather skeptical, just about the fact that she knows that it’s a big step, and she doesn’t know too much about the doctrine yet. But that’s what we’re here for! Anyway, we’re excited about that.

We’re hoping that we might be able to put another couple of dates by the end of this week.

Let’s see… Not too much else happened this week… Just lots of biking in the rain and whatnot. But I really can’t think of what else to write this week…

Anyway, I’ll just be done with this now, since my mind is blank. But thanks for all the support and prayers! It’s good stuff.

Yeah, that’s right… We still haven’t gotten any snow. But hey, on the up side, it was cold enough to snow this week! At least that’s a great thing!

Anyway, enough about that. I apologize that I’m having to write on Wednesday this week. You see, Monday was a holiday, and yesterday we weren’t able to because in the morning we had Zone Conference, and in the afternoon we had appointments. So, yeah. I’m writing on Wednesday.

But hey, this week has been really good. We had one day where we taught a total of 7 lessons, which was awesome! As I was reading the stats off to the District Leader on Sunday night, he said several times, ‘??Bien hecho!’ (Good work). So yeah, good stuff is going on. If all goes well (please pray that it does), we’ll have 2-3 baptismal dates by the end of the week.

Oh, we also got news yesterday in the Zone Conference that this past year, our mission beat our goal for baptisms! We had a goal for the whole year of 1000 baptisms, and we ended up with 1017! It was a great thing to have happen this year. The goal for 2007 is 1200, and we’re sure that with faith and prayers we can accomplish it. So, yeah… Pray for that, too.

Anyway, it’s really exciting. I also get to see Elder Barrios (my trainer) quite often, as he lives between us and our area. (Yeah, we don’t live in our area. Actually, we don’t even live in our zone…) So, I see him rather often, and occasionally they give us rides.

But yeah, nothing like the whole burglary thing happened this week… So, sorry that I don’t have any super-neat stories. Maybe I’ll have one for next week.

Enjoy, everybody!