Elder Collin DeWitt: WEEK SEVENTY THREE

I killed a trash panda on Friday. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the trash panda, they are more commonly known as raccoons. We were driving back at night from exchanges in Castlegar, and I saw two little glowing eyes sitting in the middle of the road. As I got closer, it noticed I was coming and tried to run away. I hit the brake as quickly as I could to avoid hitting it, (I didn't swerve, because that's dangerous) but unfortunately the poor guy was too slow and I ran him over with my right tires. We didn't stop in the middle of the highway to look at his dead body, so we just drove all the way home. Our car doesn't have any battle wounds, which was great but also slightly disappointing.

Right before killing the trash panda, I ate a whole pound of meat. I'm not sure if that makes ME qualify for trash panda status. A member made me eat it.

A Stromburger (named for its creator Brother Strom of the Trail Ward) contains two enormous beef patties, a slice of sausage, and a hunk of deep-fried macaroni and cheese. I added some lettuce and tomato to make it a salad. It was honestly pretty nasty. Good for a few bites, but the rest of the bites were just to make sure I didn't get made fun of for not finishing. I felt horrible for every time I made fun of the guy on Man vs. Food for not finishing his food. I also felt horrible in general. We were offered some alka-seltzer, and since I was afraid of the potential heart attack I would have on the way home, I took two tablets. And we finished the night off by hitting that trash panda. It was a quality day. I've made some dietary changes that I'm going to be sticking to for the rest of my life. One of them is to never eat a Stromburger ever again.

Before all that happened, we had a great exchange with the Trail missionaries. Elder Steiner and I went up to Nelson, which is a very strange place. But, we had a good time and got a lot of work done.

The craziest part was the next day. Saturday.

We had three appointments set. Erica (a potential investigator) at 12:00, Chelsea (investigator) at 1:30, and Dennis (potential investigator) at 3:00. Everything was looking good. We asked Brother Wiebe to come with us to visit Erica. The three of us showed up at Erica's house, and an old guy answered the door and said, "They're all in the shower. Probably come back in a couple hours." So, we changed plans on the spot and visited another investigator named Dani that we had been meaning to see this week. We had a good visit, and then went over to Chelsea. Brother and Sister Henrie met us there, and we went and knocked on the door. Chelsea let us in, and we all sat down and started talking. Right as we were about to start the lesson, there was a knock at the door, and a couple came in. They gave Chelsea a hug and started talking happily, while the four of us just sat there. After about a minute, they looked over at us and just stood there. We introduced ourselves, and talked for a few seconds. It was obvious that they were here to visit Chelsea for a lot longer, so I asked if we could come back at 4:00. Chelsea said that 4:00 would be great, so we left. We apologized to Brother and Sister Henrie, and started tracting. We checked our phone, and saw that Chelsea had texted and called us earlier, telling us that her friends were coming over, and if we could bump the time to later in the day. Oops. We were a little paranoid that Dennis would ditch us, so we called him to confirm our appointment. He said he got called in to work, and we rescheduled for next Saturday. We went back over to Erica's house, and the old guy answered again and told us that they had all miraculously contracted the flu, and so we couldn't visit them. Not sure what we'll do about that one.

The meeting with Chelsea at 4:00 went well. The Henrie's couldn't come with us to that one, so we asked Brother Wiebe. We read through the book of Enos, and talked about prayer and repentance. We really emphasized that she needs to be praying about the truthfulness of what we're teaching, and how to recognize the answers to her prayers. Hopefully that was helpful.

The rest of the week was filled with tracting and contacting, and trying to set appointments with people. We've been working on a map of our area that will help us to keep track of where we've tracted in the area, so we can make sure we don't go over something again, and get to the streets that we haven't been to.

The best part of being a district leader is definitely the opportunity to sit down with the members of the district at the end of an exchange, and see what I can do to help them out. Elder Stocking is a new missionary, and I got to sit down and talk with him a little bit after the exchange. It was one of the highlights of my mission experience. The Spirit was so strong, and I felt so much love for him. It really helped me to see that ministering is so simple, but can have such an incredible impact. It wasn't a check-the-box thing, but just an opportunity to connect with him and support him. He's not struggling with anything, and I didn't give him any profound advice, but we both knew that we were there to sustain each other and that we loved each other. It was such a great experience.

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful week! And if you don't have a wonderful week, find the good parts and focus on them.

Also, you could buy some Ben & Jerry's. That works really well too.

Love you all!

Elder DeWitt