The busiest week of my life.....so far

A field we walk through 

Sooooo first things first, i feel that i must address why this letter is coming on a Tuesday instead of a Monday. First thing I gotta ask, is have you ever had it coming out both ends?? For all of you who answered no, thank your lucky stars. Monday morning i woke up and felt really really sick. And to make matters worse it was literally every 30 minutes. I dont even know how i had that much junk in me to begin with. But it was pretty bad so we called the Dr and he told me what medicine to get and then we called a lady in our ward who was nice enough to pick up the medicine for us since we couldn't even leave the house. Soooo in summary....worst P-Day EVER, haha, but i'm feeling just a bit better today and the vomit-iarrhea has stopped so we came to internet to write the fam and tell them we are still alive...barely ;)

             So like the title says, this has probably been the busiest week of my life. We have had soooo many appointments every day this week, so many that at times we were literally jogging from appointment to appointment. We have been having great success though! We are teaching 4 full families right now which is pretty much unheard of in the mission and we also have a bunchhh more investigators like single or have just one kid. So we have been greatly blessed. This being said we have absolutely noooo down time.  Lunch is now an hour long exactlyyyy and we never get back to the house before 9:30. So the week has been fulfilling but also draining haha but i have a lot of cool stories this week soo buckle up!

My desk area!  I try to keep it clean for the most part.

                    So me and Elder P are walking home one day this week at about 6 oclock and we are walking alongside these houses by this highway when a car pulls up ahead of us and a dude gets out and opens his trunk. We didnt really notice him until right as we pass his car he closes his trunk and steps quickly out into the road in front of us. He had this long thing in a paper bag under his arm and started talking to P and motioning us further off the road. So the situation is already gettin sketchy real quickk. Then we get to the side wtih him and he makes a motion with his hand like "hand it over" and says "Da me todo que tiene..mrphsnfe...mmsmfemf." Now my spanish isnt great, but i usually do pretty well with hand gestures and i definitely heard "Give me all you have...followed by some mumbo jumbo" so im already confused. Then P started saying okay and taking off his backpack and I'm like YO WE ARE GETTING JACKED!!! And I'm like son it is broad daylight, next to a highway, and it's one dude who is probably 50 years old, i am nottt about to let this happen right now! So i literally clench my fist and am about to punch this dude in the mouth and runnn, when he turns to me and says "Da me todo que tiene...para leer."......soooo in English that's "Give me all you have....to read." In other words this was an investigator. haha. He started talking about how he had seen us in the street before and wanted to read all that we had before he died and how he was interested in having a real Book of Mormon, so i gave him a Book of Mormon and he was so excited. I sure hope my spanish improves before i end up hurting some poor seeker of truth haha.

Elder P collapsing in the grass after finding agenda

             Okay third and final story of this week also has the spiritual thought with it. This week and for a while now i have been thinking a lot about the concept of faith and what exactly it is and how we can grow it etc. So i know i told you about that 30 minute short cut that me and my comp took through some field with grass up to our waists to get to a food appointment. Well this week we had a food appointment with the same family and i wasn't about to not go the same way -haha- way too much fun. So we were going through the field only this time it was harder...apparently my comp has a fear of snakes and horses and there were horses there this time and i swear i stepped on a snake and it was soaking wet and what ended up happening was two missionaries were screaming and running like a couple of crazy people through this field as if being chased by some imaginary terror. So we end up laughing it off afterwards until later that day Elder P realizes he doesn't have his agenda. So we are brainstorming and im like bro, what if it fell out when we were running and jumping through that field. So we check our house and we call the food appointment people and ask them to look but no luck, so we figure the only possibility is that it is in the field. So we were just gonna leave it until we realized that it has all the phone numbers and ward adresses in it and we need it. So i tell him for whatever reason, that if we pray to be able to find it and have faith, we will be able to find it because we need it to do the Lord's work. So we have no time because of investigators, so we wake up the next morning at 6:30 and head over to this field. We get to the field which is roughly the size of 2 football fields, and say a prayer asking for us to be able to find it and then start trudging. Its morning so there is dew all over the grass and we walk alllllllllll the way across the field trying to follow what very vague remnants there are of our footprints and we are soaked up to our waists without an agenda. So we start back accross this field again and at one point we are on the path that we can now see clearly because we had followed it moments earlier. About halfway back I just stop for some reason and then turn around. Elder P was like "hey it keeps going this way" and i was like yah i can see that, but for some reason i had turned around. I looked closely at the grass behind me and noticed very concealed footprints that we must have missed on the first combover. I followed them only 4 steps and saw deep in the grass a soaking wet, but very usable agenda. We freaked out and then said a prayer of gratitude for what was clearly a miracle from God through the Holy Ghost. I was so glad that my faith had paid off in such a big way as a gift from Heavenly Father! That experience has helped me to know a little more about faith. Faith isn't always going to pay off that way, sometimes we have to pray for help and have faith that it is God's will that we not receive it. I don't know how many times i prayed yesterday when i was sick out of my mind that God would take away the pain or the nausea. And God let me suffer through it because it was a test in my life that i apparently needed to have. Sometimes that's how its gonna be. We are gonna pray and he is gonna be next to us through that trial but we are going to go through that trial. I have always loved the story about the man and the footprints in the sand. How there were always 2 sets of footprints as the Savior walked beside him through life, but in the hardest moments there was only one set of footprints. The man asked the Savior why he abandoned him when he needed him most in the hardest times. The Savior said that in those moments he didn't abandon him, but instead, in these moments, the Savior had carried him. I know that the Savior is with us through trials. This week has been hard for all the new missionaries and we have been thinking alot about home. But i know that all the feelings we are having or have had during trials are the same feelings that the Savior felt. He knows our pain and he will help us through.