Hola todos!!
Wow, well this has been quite the week. We got transfer calls Monday night and I was scared that I might be transferred out of Yuma, which I totally do not want to happen any time soon. The first call we got though, was from the mission president - President Howes - and we were wondering what was up. He talked to Elder Cuthbertson and called him to be a zone leader (which is super sweet and exciting!) and then told him to hand the phone over to me. I was shaking like crazy and freaking out a little bit, wondering why he wanted to talk to me. Turns out he wants me to train! This time it's for real and he just said that he had every confidence that I would do a good job. Entonces en mi mision, ya soy papa! It was cool because my "great-grandfather" on the mission, Elder Ries, just extended his mission and is now an AP, and gets to see his first great grandchild so to speak. I find all these mission genealogies somewhat amusing. Trainers are your dads and their trainers are your grandparents and so forth.
So I had to go up to Tempe yesterday morning for a trainer's meeting and to pick up "my boy"! It was a fun trip going up 3 and a half hours and then back after the meeting, but I could not be more excited about my new companion. His name is Elder Evan Johnson, and he's a wrestler from Illinois! He's a total stud and I know that we are going to do awesome work here. He's super similar to me (just a tad bit taller) and we already get along perfect. In fact, we already had a bunch of lessons last night and all of them went good! He's about at the same stage I was with the Spanish when I first came in, but he does great and is good at asking questions, which is what I need a lot of practice on. You don't really get anywhere in a lesson if you're not involving the investigator and getting them to think about why they need this in their life. So it's just a process, and you always have to work at being a better teacher and studying the material more yourself to get new insights and be able to teach it simply and purely. This is another reason why I'm excited to train - as I teach him we're going to be starting over and I'm going to be able to study thoroughly those basic things that make good missionaries great! I'm also excited because since I'm a greenie training a greenie, we're going to have tons of greenie fire here and hopefully some greenie blessings as well!
We just had quite a few lessons and miraculously found basically everyone at home! That definitely does not happen often. So we got to visit everyone and all of the lessons actually went really good! He definitely came prepared and it's going to be a learning experience for the both of us. I'm pretty sure he's going to be training me at the same time I try to train him. And that's why I love this whole process! Everyone always keeps learning and improving as an individual and as a missionary. That's definitely what I need right now, because I feel totally humbled and inadequate. I have no choice but to rely on the Spirit and put my trust in the Lord, because I'm still so new to everything. I'm not perfect with my Spanish and I don't always know exactly where to go and what to do, but I know that we will be guided and helped as we do all that we can.
Halloween was definitely different for us this year... We weren't allowed to be out on the streets after dinner, so we ended up going to the trunk-or-treat at the Church. It was kind of funny - I could tell that we were combined with an English ward right off the bat. I could tell because we had gotten there I think right on time and there were actually a bunch of people there! That's when I knew it couldn't just be our branch. There's usually maybe one or two people that get there right on time, and that's usually the people that are in charge of it, and setting it up! I found it somewhat funny. So for our costumes, we just switched up our nametags and I put on one of the zone leaders'. I pretended to order everyone around while the missionary who had Elder Cuthbertson's tag (Elder Cuthbertson is our district leader) pretended to brown nose super bad and just give me all kinds of compliments. It was all pretty funny. So yeah, I didn't get any candy this year (didn't want any) but I did have some amazing agua de pina and horchata, which made me 100% happy. It was cool to see investigators and less-actives there but we felt kind of ridiculous having 10 missionaries all there at the same place not really doing anything. So we took off and went to one of the missionaries' apartment to play Monopoly. We did feel kind of worthless that night, but it was also pretty fun.
Since we couldn't do anything Sunday night either, we got to go to this way cool missionary fireside and sing Armies of Helaman with 12 missionaries! That was pretty cool and we got to hear some awesome conversion stories. The Lord definitely prepares people to accept the Gospel and it really can be throughout their life.
So last Preparation Day we went bowling, since the missionary who just finished up and was going home (Elder Bunderson) wanted to. It was way fun, and it was cool to do it with a big group of missionaries. What was even more cool is that I got to go on exchanges with Elder Bunderson last Friday and it was awesome! We biked around everywhere talking to people and individually talked to over 50 people on the streets (so 51 OYMs for the day!). That's more than some missionaries get in a week and I was glad we got to have an awesome day like that before he went home.
So yep, Elder Cuthbertson is now a zone leader and he's serving on the ASU campus, working in English. And I'm here in Yuma, training Elder Johnson and loving it. I'm finally on a solid workout schedule and excited to work hard in missionary work as well as in getting back in shape! Sweet!
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