The biggest up of this week was Saturday. We got to go to the Reno Temple (picture below; more info at http://mormon.org/searchResults?theme=blue&query=temples) with a guy named Casey Bohner who goes into the MTC on November 10th, headed to the Lansing Michigan Mission. He has been doing a lot of stuff with us. It was super sweet. We had a really good time. It’s about 1 hour 30 min drive into Reno and its actually fun because there is a real highway. Which is cool.
Sacrament meeting was very good this week. It was the primary program and we had 0 investigators, but we had 5 less active families there. I think 2 of them were just there for the program, but he other 3 we have been working with and had no reason to just come to the program, so that was very exciting.
What do I do on a typical day? Well, I wake up at 6:30 and get ready for exercise. We usually go for a run or play a little basketball now that we are really close to the church and can. Sometimes we'll just stay in the apt and do some pushups and crunches and stuff, but that usually ends up being less productive. After that we take our turns showering and eating breakfast. Which is always delicious. At about 8:00 our personal study starts and we do that until 9:00. Right now I am reading in the Book of Mormon for part and I am starting to read Jesus the Christ for the other part. I already finished Our Search for Happiness and Our Heritage (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/js_h/1). I also read Joseph Smith History (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/js_h/1) once a week because Elder Pearson's wife asked us to. That is very interesting. There are a lot of different things in there that I’m already starting to notice. Today I highlighted every place where he set a good example. Next week I’m going to highlight everywhere somebody else set a good example. It’s interesting. Then we have comp. study from 9:00 to 10:00. Usually that consists of one chapter from Preach My Gospel and an activity in there and a section from the white handbook. Oh, ya, and sharing whatever we learned in personal study. Then I’ve got language study from 10:00 to 11:00. Usually I do exercises from my practice book and read out loud. We also play games to try to memorize words sometimes. Like I spy or 20 questions in Spanish. That kind of thing is pretty helpful. Then we have lunch from 11:00 to 12:00. I make something good and eat it. Then we go out into the world. Usually we start off the day with either some kind of service (we move a lot of people) or with a visit to somebody who’s less active. There are a decent amount of less active members that are retired, so that is nice. Usually we do one or both of those things until about 2:00. At about 2:00 we usually try to have a lesson or at least contact with one of our couple retired investigators. We usually have a lesson or at least a short visit and that brings us until about 3:00. At 3:00 we start either making member visits or giving lessons to less actives who have kids starting to come home from school, which means we can go into their house because its not just a single mom at home (only if their kids are older though). We can usually do that until about 4:00 or 4:30. At 4:30 a few days a week, we have dinner. We do it then so we can get a full dinner, lesson, and talk about referrals before we have to be at the church for our Spanish class, which we teach at 6:00 but have to be a little early for to unlock the church. Then we teach our class at 6:00. That usually goes until about 7:00 or 7:15 and we usually have an apt. set up either with a member family or an investigator at about that time. So we go teach a lesson or do a family home evening or something until about 8:15. At that point we either go back and talk to the church ESL students, sometimes teaching one of them, or we have another lesson. We always have to work to find lessons for the nighttime because you can’t make visits unannounced after about 7:15 here because everyone is starting to go to bed. It’s weird. I think it’s because there are like 0 lights here, so the moment it gets dark people start thinking that its getting late. It’s definitely funny and a challenge, but we find things to do. Then at 9:00 we go back to the apt and plan for the next day. Usually I grab a snack and do something else and then I’m in bed by 10:00 most nights even though our bed time is 10:30. Then I get up and do it again.
What do I eat? I cook just about everything for breakfast. Almost everyday I have chocolate chip pancakes and sausage with an apple or banana or something for breakfast. I also sometimes scramble, fry, or make an overeasy egg with toast. For lunch I almost always eat pasta roni or rice a roni with good bread with melted cheese or something. I’m eating pretty well. I get creative sometimes too. One time I made a salami, roast beef, avocado, mozzarella, onion and green pepper sandwich toasted under the broiler. It was way good. I'm going to try Ramen stirfry soon from the cookbook I have. I eat pretty well most of the time.
