The Mission: The Desolation of POG

So if you're wondering about the subject line, POG is a mixture of passion, orange, and guava juices. Very delicious. However, the orange juice at the MTC has quite an interesting side effect. I ignored this side effect when I was getting the juice however because I love it. Anyways, nothing happened to me. But this just so happened to be one of the hardest weeks ever.

Don't get me wrong, everything is great. But this week was hard. It all started out with us getting up super early on Monday because we had service duties. Then we had to go teach our investigators at the Training Resource Center. Some of the investigators are real and some aren't, but we don't know who is who. Our first investigator showed up with 3 minutes left and we somehow managed to teach her the restoration and committed her to reading the Book of Mormon and praying. Her name is Cristin. Our other investigator is named Makayla and her boyfriend is a member, so he was able to answer questions for her outside of our lessons. And just yesterday we committed her to be BAPTIZED! That's right, September 30th. We won't be able to be there for the baptism if she is a real investigator but the feeling of euphoria when she said she wanted to be baptized was indescribable. Classes and studies have been going great, it's hard to figure out what to teach your investigators, but it gets easier as you go.

I got 3 packages 3 days in a row this week, I felt pretty popular. It started on Tuesday with some goodies from Aunt Joan, that was really nice, then on Wednesday I got a package from home that had a bunch of great stuff in it, I was happy about the foot roller and so we're all of my roomates. Our feet get pretty sore. Then on Thursday this HUGE BOX came from Amazon prime pantry full of a ton of chips, queso, and salsa. While I could have eaten it all by myself, I shared it with the district. It was nice for everyone to be able to relax and laugh with some good old fashioned chips and salsa.

We've been studying a lot about recognizing the spirit this week and I've really been able to apply that to teaching. So has Elder Scoresby. He is amazing at testifying to our investigators. It's sort of unfair how good he is actually. I'm grateful to have such an awesome companion.

I've been reading Ether 12 a lot in my studies. It has a lot of examples of faith working miracles. I asked my branch president about it and he explained to me that faith and priesthood are completely connected with each other. While someone with the priesthood can command miracles, given that it be God's will and that they have perfect faith, someone with perfect faith alone can sometimes call upon priesthood power to bring miracles. Like the woman with the blood disease that believed if she only touched the robe of Christ she would be healed. She had perfect faith, and was able to receive that healing THROUGH the power of priesthood. I thought that was pretty cool.

We got our flight and travel plans this week. We leave on the 18th at 3 in the morning. Our plane doesn't leave until around 7:30 though. I'm sad to leave the MTV and my district but I'm super excited to get out to the field.

Pictures

1: Elder Scoresby and I

2: Elder Goodrich took a selfie after he took picture 1

3. The temple this morning

4. Elder McDonald 

5. Elder Sullivan

6. Elder Johnson

7. Elder Scoresby

8. Elder Anderson

9 and 10. The goodies our room got on Thursday

I almost forgot! One of the district leaders here that I met is a long lost cousin of mine. 3rd cousin by the way. His name is Elder Savage, he's a cool guy.