Dover invasion

 Hey yall! so I mentioned last week that I went on exchanges with Dover. When I left somehow I left my bedding and pillow, and so I've been spending the last week sleeping in the sleeping bag I packed for Osorno hehe. 

Some highlights from the week: 

- member took us to dinner, had the worst road rage I've seen haha. Guardian angels were working hard on I-24 that day.

- Got the COVID booster, at first I was fine but by the end of the day I was shaking uncontrollably. I had every symptom known to man, and my companion gave me a priesthood blessing. All the symptoms went away during the blessing and a little bit afterwards, a tender mercy from God that I needed more than I knew. The worst night of my life followed, but i knew that God was watching me. But seriously though, it was worse than the time I got the vaccine and then decided to pull an all-nighter and hike Timp😂

- Dover came over today because Elder Morrill is dipping out to Argentina tomorrow. I got my bedding back! We played pickleball all day, it was awesome. 

- The hole Elder Wilstead punched in our wall is patched! Same with the knife holes in the kitchen! 

- Max (my nephew) has started bouncing!

-Accidently ran through a moat so rip my shoes pants and car

This past week has been a testament to me that God is laboring with us. We are imperfect, but as long as we try our best he will pick up the slack. 

Love y'all! 

Boontown

 I don't have a lot of time today, but it was a good week. went on exchanges in Dover aka Boontown USA, and had a lesson with the branch president where ever topic imaginable was brought up. like seriously, poor Perry was introduced to the entirety of deep doctrine in about 1 hour haha. The neighbor downstairs was performing an exorcism of something all night, so there was incessant screaming all night. Anyways, Miguel y Marta y Lauren are on date, I'll explain that next week. Prayers are always appreciated, love y'all!

Chile news! Also transfers...

 Howdy yall! This last week got a tad crazy, on Thursday morning it started snowing here, it snowed about 4 inches. In Utah this would have amounted to nothing, but here in Tennessee all heck broke loose and the system died, so we got locked down for a few days. It was actually not bad. We did a lot of phone work and actually found a lot of people, definitely saw the hand of the Lord there. We did have to cancel a few critical lessons, but hopefully we can have those this week. 

We have a goal here to get 30 contacts a day, and we have this streak of like 60ish days right now. This was a mandate done by our mission president, and at first I wasn't a fan of it honestly, thinking it put too much emphasis on the numbers side of the work. However, I've come to realize that it actually just helps motivate us to talk to everyone, and we've seen a lot of "Hand of the Lord moments." The amount of times that 30th contact ends up being a really cool new person is actually astounding, it's been cool to see the Lord help us reach our goals. 

Anyways, yesterday as we ate some fire grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch I got an email that contained my itinerary! I leave for Chile February 10th, and I have very mixed feelings about it. I've actually fallen in love with this area, and it's going to be so hard to leave, but I'm also excited because I know it's where the Lord wants me to go. Ive learned so much here in the TNM, it's gonna be tuff to move on but as they say, there's no growth in comfort!

Transfer News: I'm staying in Kirkwood with Elder Godfrey which I'm stoked about, It's been such a blast to learn from him. 

Love yall! 

1) dug up a stegosaurus so that was rad

2) someone at our apartment murked their car

3)pretty

4) Me and elder Godfrey celebrating hitting our weekly finding goal with Demetrius @ben

5) East district! rip sister Cook and sister Everitt

Happy New Year!

 Sorry it's been a bit! I think my last email was before Christmas, so I'll start there. Christmas eve we had a surprisingly successful time street contacting, everyone was so kind and surprisingly outside. We had a huge heat front, and so it was 80°. It was so nice walking around Christmas eve/ Christmas with short sleeves haha. we had dinner with the Kuroiwas, this super cool family that made some awesome shrimp scampi🦐

After that we went to the apartment and cold called, which also surprisingly went well considering it was Christmas Eve, the Lord was definitely answering prayers on that one. 

Christmas day was our Pday, and me and Elder Godfrey decided to treat ourselves to some McGriddles but alas McDonald's was not open. So we went home and had some granola bars and I was able to open a package my mom sent me over video call with the fam. I got a tie with dinosaurs on it! #swag 

We then went to the church and played some games, pretty much a normal p day actually. It was kind of wierd, Christmas this year felt like a normal day, guess that's kind of a part of serving a mission! It was super cool focusing more on Christ and what he's done for us, and seeing how just everyone was kinder and had their arrows facing outwards. 

Another week came and went, not much out of the ordinary happened except for an exchange with Elder Thomason, he's a goober it was pretty fun. New years eve we had a super hype lesson with this Catholic lady named Sharon, and then a meal with the Adams family. We had a curfew of 6 pm, so we just did more cold calling after dinner. I think I have cold called every holiday of the mission so far, surprisingly it has been pretty fun on those days because people are generally happier and thus more open to at least conversation. Anyways New years day came, and with it more tornados! This time they mainly hit this stretch of land like 10 miles north of us, we just got some warm wind lol. This lady that we are teaching had her roof blown off, it's still so weird to me that tornados not only exist, but are just a part of life here. And we aren't even in tornado Valley! anyways, we had to hunker down for New years day and we played board games and you called it Cold calling. 

That brings us to this week! Thankfully we should be back on normal p day schedule. Elder Godfrey has been so fun to work with,this transfer has been a blast I'm sad that it's only gonna last one more week. 

This last week I was getting a little frustrated with myself for not being able to do more to help my area. It hasn't been so much being frustrated with outward results, more so just hoping my imperfections were not costing the people in the area, hoping that I'm not doing something to prevent more success. Then, I read Alma 29, but focused on the first four verses. I won't tell you the details of the study u had, as that would probably be useless to all reading this, but I'd encourage yall to go back over that chapter, it's powerful. I know that the Lord knows how to work around imperfect instruments, and as long as we are striving with with we have to do our role and improve, he will fill in the gaps.

Love yall!

- Elder Thomason before and after shots of drinking maté

- funny text, pretty much the south in a nutshell

-Elder Godfrey straight mobbin 

- Tennessee in a picture 

- the district

- cool sunset, pics don't do justice but they're crazy down here

Brother and Sister Adams (went to law school with Eric and Kristin Jeppson)