Elder Collin DeWitt: WEEK EIGHTY ONE

Some amazing things happened this week. The weather FINALLY broke 0 degrees. It was 2°C (35.6°F) on Monday, and 0°C (32°F) on Tuesday. It felt absolutely wonderful. Also, remember how I haven't had any decent Mexican food in over a year and a half? The streak finally ended. Brother and Sister Broadhead have returned from Mexico after visiting with Sister Broadhead's family. They were in charge of the missionary dinner calendar before they left for three months. Nobody in the ward signed up to feed us for the month of March so far, and when Sister Broadhead found out, she invited us over for every night this week. Sister Broadhead is from Hidalgo, and as a result makes wonderful authentic Mexican food. We had tamales and rice, and it was absolutely wonderful. Next up on the menu for this week is posole. I'm so happy.

We got transfer calls last night, and Elder Murtonen is going to Cochrane (not the same ward I served in). I'll miss him! I'll be getting Elder Francia from Sydney, Australia. Should be fun!

We had a very gong show time in church this week. It all started with the opening hymn. "Scatter Sunshine". What a terrible, weird song. I can't believe that ever got approved to be in the hymn book. The rest of the sacrament meeting continued, interrupted by full-throated screaming from a older child, improvised special musical numbers, a speaker who couldn't catch his breath, and an "opposed" vote in the sustainings. Crazy. Did I mention this was ward conference, and we had a potential investigator come?

We then moved to the second hour, where the stake presidency held a discussion about "Come, Follow Me". They asked five families to share their experiences. A couple with no children living at home went first. The husband started off with, "I warned the stake president that I would be candid with my comments..." and proceeded to give us all the reasons that "Come, Follow Me" didn't work for him and why he doesn't need it. He concluded with, "I already know everything. I know everything I need to gain eternal life. I mean, I don't know everything, but I know everything I need to gain eternal life." His wife spoke next, and spoke about how "Come, Follow Me" has changed her life, and how wonderful it is.

The next person to get up was an older sister. She talked for a few minutes on how great the book is. Only problem was, she wasn't talking about the "Come, Follow Me" book. She was talking about a random book about Joseph Smith's life that a friend bought for her. After her, a young mother got up and complained about how difficult it was to teach their kids. Finally a long-winded brother got up and took the remainder of the second hour explaining how he and his family study. This left the stake presidency with about one minute to end the meeting on a positive note, leaving everybody pretty confused. Luckily the potential investigator went with a member to primary instead of coming to second hour.

That potential was Lindsey! Sister Schow invited her, and she loved it! That was a miracle. She told Sister Schow that she would always go to church with her mom, and sitting there with her felt like she was back in that moment again. Lindsey had a lot of good questions that she asked Sister Schow, and she said that she will definitely be coming back! It's really great to be working with a member on it, especially since it makes her more comfortable, and she's able to have great experiences like that.

We had a lesson with Kathy on Saturday, and we were going to teach the Plan of Salvation. However, when we got to the lesson, Daniel her seven year old son went full brat mode (think Arnold the spoiled brat kid from the Andy Griffith Show). We weren't able to teach it because he was so distracting. He was throwing things, hitting us, hitting his mom, yelling, and doing just about anything he could to be disruptive. Kathy did almost nothing to stop him, except for occasionally asking him to settle down. We finally conceded the fight to our little opponent, and left. We gave the Plan of Salvation pamphlet to her, and asked her to read it. We'll hopefully talk about it with her next time!

We had two other appointments fall through this week, which was a little bit of a bummer.

"We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day."

-Elder Richard G. Scott October 2010 General Conference

Love you all!

Elder DeWitt