Nutty

Well Monday was crazy; we were running around like mad missionaries, trying to get everything done P-day. We tried to get to the library to email sooner and it was hectic. Elder Jessee likes to spend an hour in the morning to clean the apartment; the other Elders in our district came over to do laundry, and started to help us get through it all. Oh, Elder Jessee is the district leader, it's awesome doing exchanges, we get to meet up with other missionaries at a non-disclosed places (i.e. our apartment) and to switch and try different things that we normally don't get to try in our regular companionship. Like one time we got to go park contacting, IT IS AWESOME, particularly with more people out and about, and I never thought that I would do/say this but (THANK YOU POKEMON GO), we get to meet people and we get to nerd out with them and then teach them the gospel. One exchange it was 110-115 degrees outside so we stayed inside to not DIE. I have kept track of my weight and found out that I drop 1/5 of a pound of water weight for every hot day that we fast, but by the next day I put it back on so don't worry about that.

 

Tuesday, we had District meeting, FUN STUFF, (editor’s note: this is sarcasm) I didn't know this but apparently if you have a district leader as a companion, you can't get out of doing training. The district leader seems to know where I live and sleep, so I am always asked to give some sort of training in District meeting. We had a lesson with a member present and it was okay. We have been teaching this guy that has been an Eternagator for years, and his record said that he had been taught all of the lessons. So we were going back through them and started teaching the lessons again and apparently the Elders thought that they were sly and taught him point by point but they didn't actually teach him the gospel. So we taught him the Plan of Salvation up to the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and we told him to interrupt us and let us know if he had been taught this before or if it sounded familiar, alas he did not. Later that evening the member present that we had, had us on over for dinner, and we were going to have a lesson with his neighbor in his home, but they didn't show up. So we went on over there and knocked on their door and no one came to answer the door. So we had to go about our day, (as it turns out they have had food poisoning for the past 4 days, their phone's battery melted in the sun, and they got into a fight and the girlfriend dropped him hard in one punch to the face). We spent a total of half of our day with the members that day.

 

Wednesday, we visited a less active, and he has a condition that he can can't remain focused on the subject at hand. And we spent the time talking about the awfulness of the world, and about prostitutes in 3rd world countries, and the awful situation of their souls. We then pointed out that he should focus on getting his own soul out of its awful situation, but he seemed to press on without giving it any thought. We gave service at Bishops Storehouse and we got to meet some super solid members and some questionable people and their beliefs. We, after that visited a recent convert family and they were outside swimming in the little kiddy pool and the father of the family, we got to read the Book of Mormon with him to keep him on his goal of going to the temple and being sealed as a family. We had dinner at a member's home, they had their son and daughter from Las Vegas come down and visit, and their son is a chef and man-oh-man he made this lasagna that had everything that I dislike, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, (maybe sauerkraut?), anchovies, and some how made it taste REALLY GOOD. I got back up and had 2nds and 3rds, right after we had a Book of Mormon study class, and we had no one show up. The only people that showed up were all 4 of us missionaries and the other missionaries ride, so we got to read where the Sister missionaries ride was in the Book of Mormon, and it was good, it was the story of my name sake.

 

Thursday, was dead all the way till it was evening. We got to our dinner appointment and had dinner at "IN-N-OUT Burger." We then found out (because we didn't look at the calendar) that our dinner scheduled to go out on member present lessons, so we tried the potentials that we had planned and visited some families right after. Which by some miracle were his less active home teaching companion, and one of the families he has for home teaching. We found out that the member dropped off melons to everyone on his list, and he now has a new name "THE MELON MAN." One family thought that it was filled full of drugs, or it was a bomb, and they laughed when they found out it was him doing his home teaching.

 

Friday, we left the apartment for 2 hours out of our entire day, because we were weekly planning and discussing who was really a real investigator or not and who needed to be dropped for the moment, it wasn't fun, but we did it and got through it, and we had exchanges with the Zone leaders.

 

Saturday, me and our Zone leader had a really bad exchange. It was 110-115 degrees outside so we stayed inside to not DIE, and we were bored but then we started to Geek/nerd out on each other and we had a fun time with that. Early that morning we had to go and give our ward mates a blessing of comfort and counsel, they have been having a hard time in their new area because of all of the people that like to bash on us. We did get out of the apartment and we taught the Restoration in Spanish, so those years of Spanish paid off, the Spanish Elders now have a new investigator and we got to go and eat out at Panda Express so all was okay.

 

Sunday, we visited some people they said come back later. We have Church at 2:30 pm so our day is shot for proselyting. Oh yeah you remember that crazy guy that I talked about a couple of emails back. He should back up to church and was a lot more stable, he still was crazy, but whatever he is taking is having a good effect on him and he is not as angry or as argumentative with us in Gospel Principles. We got to have dinner with some members that fed us earlier in the week and then we visited with a less active who just got back from St. Louis.

 

This has been my week in a ‘NUT’shell,

Ammon

Newsie

Well Seth, that is a very admirable goal, I hope you achieve it.  Setting and making goals is all we do for daily and weekly planning, if you hit that goal, you will be set as a missionary.  You can talk to anyone on the mission and get their number and be able to meet up with them later.  Dating is a lot like missionary work, I could draw parallels all day so I will quit while I am ahead. AND KEEP IT UP!!!!!  Even if you are the only young man there.  As missionaries, even if we only have 1 investigator make it to church it is worthwhile. Think of all of the young men presidency and the members of the ward, even if you are the 1 young man that shows up and runs the whole show you make all of their day.

 

I hope the baby shower was fun, with all of the superheros, was it Marvel or DC universe?

It is going alright right now, Oh I just got a red flag alert of your Email address saying that you are trying to steal my information, here is what I sent dad.

 

It means that is something that I will do and apply, to make things better for my studies, and I will most likely start by applying it in Alma 32 or 34, to test it out, I will mark everything on FAITH and follow out the foot notes to get a better Idea or Belief of Faith. And I will endeavor to email sooner, but we are in a bike area so we don't really have control over what time to go and do things it is usually how they (the missionaries with the car) plan out their day and we follow, because we can't bike to any of the stores or Libraries so we have to catch a ride from them, today they came early to do their laundry so we got here earlier.

 

To tell you what happened last week I have to tell you about the week before, the Libraries internet went down the Friday the week before last and was down until Tuesday of last week, so we weren't able to email on Monday, but on Tuesday, and the library was packed so we had to keep it short and we still had to leave early, because our ride for dinner arrived early to pick us up to get ahead of traffic.

 

The Work has been going okay, we have lost a lot of our investigators and we have been out trying the list of potentials the are in our new area book, and I have come to dislike it when sister missionaries, put people down and their notes just say "not interested but likes us" we went through a sheet and they are were like that and we got no one. We have been trying to revitalize the work in our "new" area, but everyone only want to meet with the sisters because they were girls and they would talk for hours at a time and not even teach a gospel principle, not 1!, 

 

I will try to start back up Journaling, I will break my bad habit of not journaling and journal more for you guys

 

Oh and I haven't gotten the bag yet, if you sent it to the Mission office then it will be a while before it gets to me, but I can wait for a bit.  Oh, I got a back Rack thing like dad's, so I can now strap things down to my bike and not have to worry about getting sweat stains on my shirts, they are really hard to get out of clothes, but they eventually come out...right? :)

 

That is AWESOME that he is doing that, KEEP IT UP!  Satan will up his game like none other, teaching people about that is hard, and helping them to stay strong is even harder.  The best way that we have found is fasting for them and if they are solid enough, to have them fast too. I have found that when I personally fast, that I need the lord in my life, I recommend that you find and read the talk ‘Fasting with Power,’ by Shayne M. Bowen, and use it to make your fast better, stronger, and more in line with the Lord’s will. Oh, how has dad done with his goal to lose weight by the end of my mission?

 

Biking is Biking, I don't yet have Calves that are as hard as rocks, but I do have Quads that are hard as rocks.  Cooking is going well as far as I can tell. I have been trying to cook more and more, but the problem is finding time, because now on bikes we have to leave 15 -20 minutes earlier to make appointments on time. I haven't been able to make bread this past week because I we don't have yeast, so we had some very floury pancakes and German pancakes.  Please, send the biscuits and gravy recipe please

 

I am feeling pretty good right now, even though there hasn't been a lot of awesome/great things that have happened. I have been trying to be more thankful for everything that I pray for.  Some missionaries offered some helpful things to try that they do to stay focused on the Lord, and they have helped out a lot, in that regard I have been trying to apply it to everyday life as a missionary and it has helped.  I feel better and feel that I can do what is required of me, which is nice and helpful.

I put some pictures up on drop box.  Who knew that we had Adobes here in the Maple ward, I didn't till I stopped for water. Oh, the one right before the adobes I thought that dad would get a kick out of it, oh and don't look at the ones in front of that one, It's just proof that if you don't put sunscreen on for one day that you will burn, and that ants live in the desert

Alright, I got to go,

 

Love You all,

 

Ammon

FOOD

Well, to let you know, I have not moved far from the Maple Ward.  In fact, I and Elder Jessee and our ward mates swapped our areas into our new area, which is now in the Maple ward.  We lost our car to President Taylor, so we are now a bike area.  Great time to Change our area from a car area to a bike area in the middle of summer, but that’s okay I could stand to lose a couple of pounds of sweat. Oh, I have a request for something else you can send me, I need a biking bag.  The bag I came out with is great and still in one piece but it is very unwieldly on a bike, and I have those angels working overtime to keep me safe.  I have been given a backpack to use but it is coming apart and we have been asked to stop using them.

 

 (When asked if he could use a bike rack or panniers.)  I can do that, the bike will be a little heavy on one side but I could do that, plus it would make it to where I won't have sweat stains on my shirts anymore.  Oh, my shirts have been turning yellow, any advice on what to do to turn them back to TEMPLE WHITE?

 

Please send some recipes, bread (any and all), 7 layer dip, tacos, coco cola chicken, meatloaf, soups, chilies, Chinese chicken salad, French toast, and Dad's Mashed Potatoes.  I have found that I can cook something and have leftovers that will last all week rather than having to keep making new stuff all of the time that is only good for 1 meal and leaves you kinda hungry afterwards. A bread recipe would be appreciated, oh and have the kids learn how to cook.  There are a lot of things that if they learn there under moms tutelage that will save them lots of grief and PAIN down the road.

 

Mom, the people here don't understand how to give a missionary a haircut, everyone here does a fad-ish hairstyle.  My hair is the closest to the approved missionary haircut standards, plus I don't want to drop $20 for a haircut that I will have to get cut again in 2 weeks, that's $60 out of my MSF that's $90 for food, toiletries, and miscellaneous. Plus, my hairstyle only looks that bad because I am still trying to figure out how to cut it myself, but when I figure it out I will change the way that I will cut it and will cut it the correct way that is mission approved.

 

We had a Fast and testimony meeting, we had a guy walk in who was a Schizophrenic just got out of a mental institution, and was very angry and highly volatile.  He kept it under wraps for the meeting, but later in gospel principles was hateful to us all and left promptly there after, but when he left he was going down the line of missionaries squeezing their hands hard and when he got to me and tried, I felt sorry for him, all the time that dad was having us squeeze his hand pays off in the end.  He tried on me and all of the other missionaries got pained looks on their face when they shook his hand but all I can say about his hand shake was that it was almost firm, but to let him know that what he was doing was unacceptable I squeezed just a little harder and made his hand pop, but I personally think that the reason that they had pained looks was because When I shook his hand I felt something unclean and unwholesome about him and that it was their reaction to his state.

 

Thanks for helping me think outside of the box,

 

Love Ammon