Monday P Day

Hey Family!

I can't believe you shattered your elbow mom! How long are you supposed to be in a cast? Is it one of the cast that goes like all the way to your shoulder? Im sorry that it makes things so tough for you but I appreciate that you still sent me a letter! I can't believe Sadie is already home! That is so crazy to me because I remember going to the farewell! And the fact that it is weird for her to do things that we take for granted every day really puts things into perspective! We have a few people that work for the Local Government in our wards and we found out some crazy things about our area. I can't disclose much information. But people here seem to be either very humble, or hard nosed and stern. On Tuesday, we went to help brother Laird Maxwell tear down a frame to a green house that he had get blown over and bent in a windstorm. He lives alone and is about mid 40's. He loves his gardening and farm work and he has a lot of good life skills! He was teaching us all kinds of things! After we helped him tear that down he fed us and then asked if one of us could climb up on the roof to glue down some loose shingles. The roofs here are flat because it barely snows. But when he asked, Elder Unasa looked up the ladder and shook his head. It was a one story house and I went up no problem haha. Brother Maxwell was asking me how I was comfortable on the roof walking around and I told him about the times I did it on slanted roofs in the snow haha. He was appalled. It was funny. Then on Tuesday we finally got to go to the temple open house! We took our investigator (Caleb). Well actually, his friends own a huge farm here that is really well known, and he works for them, (The Mortimers) and their whole family, and Caleb and us and two other investigators from their ward plus some friends all went down! It was awesome! The temple is really small compared to Bountiful. Everyone says that they are all tiny compared to Utah temples. But the temple was amazing! The baptismal font is my favorite because it is so different from Bountiful! The Celestial room is different because most temples have huge chandeliers or something and this one is a stained glass skylight ceiling! Caleb was asking us questions about all of the paintings and the different things in the temple which was cool because he was interested so we were way excited! Then on our way home, he met up with his girlfriends family and went through with them again! We are meeting with him on Wednesday to ask him about the experience! Then on Thursday we just had another day of weekly planning which is just what you make of it. It can either be super boring if you aren't invested or it can fly by when you pay attention to the needs of the people you are teaching. We found out that The restaurant that we eat at every Thursday for lunch is closing at the end of this month. We feel bad because our member put so much effort into it. Then on Friday we did a lot of practice teaching on contacting in the streets and on the doors. We had a chili cook off for Mingus Foothills that night and it was cool because a lot of the less active families we invited showed up! Then after the ward party, Unasa and I went to contact more families in the area. We stopped by a part member family and the husband (non member) answered the door. When we asked for his wife he was super rude and yelled "they found you!" And we laughed and I said "if you don't want people to come around anymore, all you have to do is let us know and we will take you off the contacting list." He slammed the door. Then the next house a guy told us to tell Bishop Duke where he can go. The thing with that is that he blamed Bishop Duke for no reason and his dad is the Stake President haha. Our Ward directories aren't updated lately so some people have moved so we knock on the door and people get super upset. We got to go down to the temple again on Saturday with the Bernardo family! That was a cool experience because Andrea the mom was asking if she can be sealed to her kids even though she is divorced. So she was very interested as well! There was an Anti Mormon guy standing outside of the temple yelling stuff about our beliefs which was fine. But he started yelling things about what goes on in the temple. Everybody was upset about it but none of us can go say anything so all the volunteers and members just had to put up with him. We met a family down there that used to live in Bountiful and their niece is Stacy Sumbot who is in Nashville serving her mission! Taylor knows her! And then yesterday after church we had the opportunity to teach Sister Wei Kong again! She barely speaks English and she has a heavy Chinese accent. We got her scriptures in Chinese. But yesterday we were able to teach her from square one. It is cool because she had no idea who God was or that there was only God because in China, they believe in many Gods. So we taught her about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and Satan. And I thought about my little kid movies, and in one of them (Emporer's New Groove) where he has an angel on one shoulder and satan on the other. So I drew a person on the chalk board and put an angel on one shoulder and satan on the other. Then I put "good" and "bad". It was a really basic lesson but it was amazing to see the light bulb go off in her head. In a lesson that simple, the spirit was as strong as I have felt it in any lesson since I have been out here. Wei mentioned that other churches down here also believe in Christ and wanted to know our difference, we told her we would get into that, but that they don't have the same beliefs about our individual and eternal salvation (her friend recently had a husband pass away.) when we told her that we can all live together as a family with our Father in Heaven is when the spirit came in the strongest. And it was good, not only for her, but for me as well. It was reassuring that everything we are teaching people is real. And knowing that makes the opportunity to Preach The Gospel the most important calling anyone can have. It was a very humbling but exciting experience. Then we taught 90 year old Neva McKnight who lives with her two sisters who are like grandmas to me out here. And she went to church for 20 years and never was baptized. Her husband has passed on and his temple work has been done and her sisters are members. We extended the invitation to be baptized and she said she wants to but it worried about her age and physically being able to do that. We told her that there are ways to do it and she said she wants to be baptized! It was another great experience! People are taking good care of us! Members feed us every day and bake us bread and everything! Great hospitality! I thought about how Taylor said he was homesick for Nashville and I know when I get transferred I will be homesick for PV. Let alone Coming home from Arizona. I love it down here! I hope all is well! We are doing two exchanges this week and I am taking over our area both times! We are meeting with a lady Wednesday morning who graduated from BYU and was heavily Mormon but left the church. She is telling us why and said she has only told a few people every. She is about 65-70. So hopefully we can resolve the concerns that she has. I love you guys and I hope you guys have a good week! Tevin.