Another Week

Hiya family

 

Well, it's been more of the same. haha. I feel like the work here is at a dead stop. Like I'm on a bike on a hill in 7th gear. Somehow, although it might be painful and clunky and include a fall or two, I gotta get back to 1st gear.

Wow. I kinda like that analogy. It's good. haha

 

I'm very sad to hear about Michelle. Obviously, her purpose in this life has been served and like grandma Snow, she's needed more in the Spirit world now. It seems like there's been a death just about every month since I came out.

 

Unconditional love huh? Maybe. It's not hard to love the people here. They're genuine people and most of them are cordial even though they don't want to talk to us. There are a few members that I feel sort of "exploit" us as full time service laborers. One specifically has had us over several times recently. We basically landscaped her whole front yard. Ugh. That's where unconditional love gets hard. Like. When you've done 3 days of service for a few hours each day and then get a text Monday morning from them that says "can you come move my trash cans to the road?" haha. Good grief. Or asking for us to come over just to move a large flower pot. It's not like we don't have time. I don't know. Just bugs me I guess.

 

Anyways. I think I need to leave my soap box somewhere else when I write home. Haha.

 

That's absolutely crazy to hear about Jeren and Lauren. Who'd of thought? Goodness. Why do yall have to go get married while I'm gone? Amber, Jeren, pretty soon Brooks... probably even Nathan and Sam will be married by the time I'm home. And maybe Heather too. haha. Wow, I'm missing a lot of stuff. Megan's graduation too! Ah, well, consecrated sacrifice right? Haha.

 

We had 2 different exchanges last week, one with the missionaries in Phelan and one with the Zone Leaders. The Zls usually only exchange with District Leaders but wanted to do an exchange with us. I went to Phelan with Elder Smith and we did some tracting and ran into a young family that invited us in. They ended up being very knowledgeable about the Bible and about the aspects of Mormonism that aren't explicitly in the Bible. Yikes. It was neat to talk to them and that they were open to talk and wanted us to come back, but honestly, I'm kind of glad I was just on an exchange. haha. I got together some scriptures that refuted several of their points and gave that list to those missionaries. They were quite happy to have them.

 

The Zone Leaders came over on Thursday for a short 2-3 hour exchange, mostly just to check up on us and our area a little. Well. Sort of. While on exchanges the Zl with me just talked with me for a while. It ended up being more of an interview and discussion session than anything else. I hope that doesn't mean anything beyond that they just wanted to know where and how I was struggling and how they could maybe help. haha.

While we were discussing the missionary efforts in Wrightwood, we ended up talking a lot about the suggestions you gave me Dad. We decided that the best thing for us to be doing is work with the members, to motivate and help them with missionary work. A lot of members don't know a lot of people in Wrightwood outside of the church, so we want to help them reach out to become friends with more nonmembers. We'll still tract occasionally and try to work with less actives as much as possible (and do service of course), but we do want to focus on the members. We were thinking of doing a sign-up sheet in church where members could sign up to have the missionary lessons.

 

Honestly, even though I love Wrightwood and the people here, I think I'm ready for a change. I realized that the main reason I want to stay is because it's not as hot as most of the rest of the mission. haha. It's been up in the 90s and over 100 in most areas but has only gotten up to 90 once in Wrightwood so far, and shouldn't get any hotter than that throughout the summer. If I stay another transfer here, I probably didn't do or learn what I was supposed to. haha. I still feel like that's the case, so we'll see what ends up happening.

 

Well. That's about all I can think of. haha. Ryan's birthday is this week! :) so is the Solar transit of Venus, which will be pretty cool. There's a member in our ward that's a big astronomy buff and will have equipment that we can view it with tomorrow.

 

Hey so, I'm still getting mail forwarded from the old mission office address with "please tell your family and friends of the new address" stickers on them. haha. Well. At least, the one and only letter I've gotten in the last 3 weeks was like that. haha. Anyways, I guess just make sure that everywhere my address is posted that it is the correct one. :)

 

Until next time, this is Elder Browning peacing out.

Love ya!