I think the easiest way to
do this is by day. So here goes:
Monday:
Thanksgiving was great! We had mostly the same things: turkey,
mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing. Apparently stuffing is called
"dressing" if its cooked outside of the turkey, since you didn't
stuff it anywhere besides your face, but I feel like that should still count. Sister L even made yams with
mini-marshmallows on top!. We weren't able to share a message, with their
guests, the really sweet couple, like we had hoped, we ran out of time and had
to run to a different appointment, but we did have a good chat, and they invited
us over for lunch the next day. The appointment after dinner was with a new member family I can’t remember how much I've told you about them before, but he grew up in the church but got distracted and fell away in his teens, he married his wife, and she just got baptized a few weeks before I got here. They are both active in the church now and are preparing to take their young family to the Temple. We are teaching them the new member lessons, which basically means going over all 5 Preach My Gospel lessons again, but in more detail because she pretty much already knows what’s going on. She seems pretty interested and engaged, and her mom is usually there too so we can just hope that some of what we talked about is sinking in for her as well.
Tuesday:
Our Zone Leaders were in town! I was on an exchange with Elder E, and Elder A was with Elder B. All three of them are exemplary individuals and missionaries. Elder E and I tracted on a certain street, we didn't have too much success but we did find a couple of potential investigators.
At noon we met up with Elders A and B for lunch with the really sweet couple that were at the Thanksgiving Dinner the day before, they are really sweet people, but she has one of those mothering-crushes on me, and I made the mistake of telling her my first name. (In case you aren’t familiar with the term "mothering-crush" I will explain it for you. It’s a term I just invented and it is when a sweet older woman takes a poor "starving" missionary and insists on treating them really well them for no apparent reason.) So everything was "You sit her Alexander." "No, Alexander, you feel at home." "You eat more." "You hungry?" "You eat!" "You not worry nothing, you eat." "You want more food?" "You eat!"
...You know how much you hate yourself after Thanksgiving dinner, when you are lying on the floor in agony asking yourself "Why dear gosh did I let myself eat so much?!?!? Imagine having all those feelings of regret and self-loathing... but directed at a small well-meaning and really actually very sweet older woman. Of course it didn’t help that the other missionaries (Elder A worst of all) were trying not to bust up laughing the whole time, and kept making not so subtle suggestions to her that I looked hungry. Don't get me wrong, the food was really good, but after eating about 30 kilograms of the stuff, it didn't really matter how good it was, I was just stuffed.
After lunch Elder E and I finished tracting on the street we had started earlier and proceeded to tract a street called Bacon (Yes, Bacon) and a Street called Alfred (not as awesome). In the evening Elder E and I taught J (I can’t remember if I told you about J either. In case I didn't, J is a really cool older guy who Elder A and I tracted into, he invited us in and we had a lesson. We talked about Jesus Christ and stuff but didn't really go over the first lesson.... meaning the Restoration.) Elder E had never met J before and didn't really know much about him, so it was pretty much up to me to teach the lesson. It was kinda scary, and I was super glad to have Elder E there to back me up and keep us on the points that we needed to teach in the lesson, but I felt like it went really, really well.
That night Elders E and B stayed the night with us in our apartment, they just crashed on the floor.
Wednesday:
For lunch we went to McDonalds. That was the first time I have eaten fast food in a month. It was really weird, I ate off the value menu (there is no such thing as a dollar menu here. Food is too expensive.) But I still spent as much as I would have on a meal and a milkshake back home. Oh! And there is a little tiny maple leaf on all the M's! It’s so weird!
That afternoon Elder A and I were back together, but we certainly weren't back in business. Monday I started a new habit of highlighting each of the items in my planer at the end of the day. Blue means that the event planned went as planned, yellow means that it happened but at a different time in the day than we planned, and red means that it didn't happen at all. I’m doing this so that we can see how well we are actually following our plans, and how much of what we planned actually got done. Ideally we would have an all blue day, and yellow isn't all that bad either, but red means that we aren't getting stuff done and that means that we aren’t being the best Missionaries we can be. Now, it’s not always our fault when things don't go as planned, sometimes our investigators cancel and we can’t do much about that.
Ahhhhhhh and that's all the letter I have time for! :(
We have to run, but I'll have to finish telling you about my week sometime.
I'm talking in Sacrament next week, wish me luck.
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