August 15, 2011

Yes, I am now a District Leader. District Leaders basically have 2 responsibilities: 1. Collect stats Sunday night and add them up. 2. Give District meetings a couple times a month. Then you have to do a couple more things that nobody else has to/wants to do. I also have to go to leadership training meetings. You can see me at one on Sister Black’s blog. My district is me and Elder Kakau, the English elders we live with (Peters and Altamirano), and the other two missionaries in our ward (Andrews and Sandoval). There are 4 districts in the zone. This district is kind of complicated for how much area it covers because 2 of the companionships are spanMs. So if you count that then we cover our whole zone, and about half of red rock. My district is bigger than my zone, hahaha.

We did make it bowling last week. Actually I didn’t do too bad. I got a 136 and a 139. The 139 was a total choke though. I bowled a 3 on the last frame, hahaha. That’s ok. I think we might go again today. It’s pretty cheap and super fun. $3 for shoe rental but only $1.50 a game. Pretty legit.

Teaching, we had a pretty solid week. We made some good progress with some those we’re teaching. We figured out that Celia hasn't gotten an answer yet because she hasn't asked if the things we are teaching are true or not. We told her you can’t get an answer to a question that you don’t ask, but then she told us that God would tell her when it was the right time to ask. I thought that was pretty unlikely, so I asked her what she normally does when she has a question to ask her father in heaven....she said she asks him....so I asked her, is this really any different? She’s planning on asking now (we think, haha) and is committed to follow the answer she gets, so we're excited for her. We talked to her about how faith is not passive waiting, its active waiting, or it requires action. Its not really faith to sit there and believe that my Father in Heaven will help me get a good grade on a test if I didn't study for it, that’s just hopeful wishing, which isn't going to get you anywhere. Now if I studied hard, I'm entitled to a little help when I ask for it. At least to cut the nerves. So we talked about some of that stuff. It was fun as it always is over there. We also taught Fabi and Humberto for the first time, which was good. Elder Kakau just killed it. He was prompted by the spirit to say some things that I never would have thought of that were fantastic and out of nowhere. Afterward I was like, “Dude, you just take a lesson any time you are going like that cuz that was sick!”

This week Maria called us out of the blue (haven't heard from or been able to contact her for a while now). She called to see if we could come by and to see how we were doing. Turns out she was pretty sick with the flu for a while, which is still a little dangerous for her because she isnt super far off from being cleared of cancer. She still has a hard time when she gets sick, but she is doing great now. She came to church on Sunday with her two little grandkids which was awesome. They got to stay all 3 hours and she really like it. Hopefully we will be setting her with a date very soon now that she’s back on track! Exciting time. I learned that sometimes you just need to keep trying with people even when you can’t get ahold of them. You never know what’s going on or how important showing them that you really do care can be.