Hi everyone!
I hope your week has been going as great as mine has!
It's been a little hectic (like always) getting a new companion and getting
adjusted again, but things have gone well. We're hoping to find some new
investigators through referrals, and this week we're planning on working a lot
more with the members to try to find new investigators. We also found out that
one of our investigators got back with his wife, which is awesome (hopefully).
So now we're teaching their whole family. I can tell that having their mom back
in the house has been a tender mercy for his kids, who have pretty much just
been alone for the entire time she's been gone because their dad works so much.
We tried to get them to come to the baptism yesterday, but the Dad was working
(again). So keep them in your prayers! As for our other investigator who bails
on us all the time, we managed to see him and he told us to come back a few
hours later - but then he wasn't there. At this point this is getting pretty ridiculous
(I mean, come on, you're a grown man), so we're probably just going to give him
some time. His baptism was scheduled for yesterday (along with yet another
investigator). This third investigator has dropped off the face of the earth.
We've been by his house and tried to call him about 5 times this week and...
nothing. So I sure hope we find some new people to teach. It was kind of
comforting to find out from the Lincoln missionaries that this area has a
reputation for being slow - so it's not just us.
My new companion, Elder Tepox, is pretty great. He's from
Puebla Mexico, and he's awesome at teaching less-active members because he used
to be inactive himself. He has a younger brother serving in the Santa Rosa
mission (right next to us) and they'll get home about the same time. He speaks
very little English, so my Spanish has had a chance to start really improving.
But I realized that it was a little selfish of me to be so focused on that when
I first heard that his English wasn't so good - I've realized I have an
opportunity to help him out with his language skills too. So that's my goal: to
do what I can to help my companion learn English.
The Spanish Sisters had a baptism on Saturday, and a ton
of people showed up - including a less-active guy that we've been trying to contact
for a long time. Turns out he's currently living in a shelter in Folsom City.
That's why we couldn't find him. Hopefully we'll be able to help him out.
We had interviews with President on Friday. He challenged
me (because apparently I'm the senior companion) to get a list of all the
members in our ward and visit every one we don't know in order to build
member-missionary trust. Seems like sage advice to me. That should really help
us with our planning too, because daily planning is like pulling teeth when you
have nobody to visit/nowhere to go at certain times of day. Slow areas are the
worst. I feel like the ward is looking at us as responsible for making
everything happen as far as new converts go and we're not really doing so well
right now...
But oh well. I'll try my hardest and at the very worst
I'll be here for 6 months before I get transferred again.
My goal is to reach 200
pounds by the end of my mission. (200 pounds of muscle, that is) so I'm eating
a lot. I don't know if it will work out, but I found some heavier 60 pound
dumbells and am in the process of looking for some 80 or possibly 100 pound
ones. I also got some copies from the P90X booklet from another Elder, who
conveniently enough knows a good protein shop here in C Heights. So I'll keep
you posted. I'm at 176 right now, so I've got a ways to go. This way I can get
home, shave myself bald, and finally get to be Bane for Halloween. With girls
out of the picture (except for Mom, but she'll be too happy to see me to talk
me out of it) the only thing I'll have to worry about is people asking me just
how out of the loop I am for dressing up as him like 3 years after the movie
actually came out...
I'm trying to remember other
interesting things that happened this week...
We went out at 2 AM to see the Lunar Eclipse that
happened on my B Day. That was pretty cool. We also caught the first few
meteors of the shower that was going on from the 17th to today. I don't know if
you saw any of that Dad, but it was pretty awesome. At least two every few
minutes during the peak, and they were all surprisingly visible.
Dad, was it weird to call
people by their first name when you got home? Because I'm at the point where I
haven't heard my own first name in months and I've basically just accepted the
fact that I am now "Nichols". Christensen is Christensen, Perkins is
Perkins, Tepox is Tepox, and sometimes Tupac. I don't even know half of my
friends' first names.
Okay refocusing: one other
cool thing that happened was that we taught a really awesome second lesson to our
newest investigator on Sunday. He seemed like he was really interested and
expressed himself well in response to all of our questions. It will be cool to
see how he progresses. We definitely brought the spirit while we were teaching,
and it's been great to work with Elder Tepox because he has a knowledge of the
scriptures that's just incredible. That's something that I think I could stand
to work on.
Well, that's all the news
that's fit to print and then some. Looking forward to talking to you in a couple
of weeks!
Love you guys.
Jake
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