We have been living in Antarctica this last week. It hasn't been cold, which is super nice, but it melted all the snow that we got and rained. And then after all that happened, it got below freezing and froze all the water. So everything, and I mean literally everything, is ice. Sidewalks, roads, plants, even the snow that didn't melt is ice. It was pretty sketchy walking around. We had to walk super careful. Luckily I didn't fall even though I was really close over 100 times haha.
Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Reynolds and his companion in his area. We served around each other in Appleton so that was fun to serve together again. We had a pretty great exchange. We had a lesson with one of their investigators and she was asking some really, really good questions about what makes our church unique and the Book of Mormon. They were really thoughtful questions and you could tell she had a sincere desire to learn. The rest of the day we actually did some Hmong and English finding even though it was the English area because the city of Middleton is about 40 mins away so we don't get over there too often. We had one of the funniest door approaches I think I ever saw. Elder Reynolds knocked on an English door and a girl answered - she looked like she was 17, but sometimes you can't tell and they could be older. He did his regular door approach and threw in the would you or your family be interested in this message just in case. She then looks at us real weird and asks us "Is this a joke?" He then responded, "Noooo this is for reals." She then responded with "Oh, well then I am not interested" and slowly closed the door awkwardly. It was really weird and funny. Never experienced anything like that before. The only conclusion we could think of is she saw 3 guys dressed up nice and probably thought he was pulling a prank to ask her to prom or something like that.
Wednesday I got back to my area with Elder Parker. We had a really successful day of finding people. We had been in a slump for quite a while and were pretty down, but we had a tender mercy of finding a super prepared family. We knocked on their door. I saw that they had lots of boxes outside their house, so once they answered, I introduced who we were and asked if we could help bring in these 7-8 boxes on their doorstep. Of course, he said yes and after we had a great talk with them. They have met with missionaries in the past and even came to our church with a couple of their friends before they moved to Minnesota. They were super open to hearing more and were very welcoming of us in their home.
Thursday we had interviews with President Williams. Good to talk with him as always. Very loving and caring guy. I am grateful for all that he has done for me over the last 18 months.
Sunday morning we had a correlation and pancake breakfast at the Oliphants house. Afterwards, we went to church and after we had a great opportunity to translate for the temple preparation class. The 4 people taking the class are all Hmong and 3 are recent converts of the last year, so that is very exciting. The translating part was definitely a struggle to explain some of that stuff. You get a lot of Hmong culture and more complex church concepts to try to explain. Try to explain the sealing in the temple and how that connects your family, family history, millennium and what happens then, and a lot more fun stuff like that. I never talked about 99% of that stuff in Hmong before so it was fun to think about it and give it my best shot. I mean that's all you really can do in Hmong. It was a really good overall class and they all super excited to go to the temple in a couple months for the first time.
Sunday night we had a great family home evening lesson with the Lee family. Super fun and awesome family. We had a great lesson on Alma 8:8-18. Talked about how times in our lives hard things happen, but no matter what, don't give up. We always have prayer, the scriptures, church, etc. to help us. And at the end of the day even if life's hard, we can always know that our father in heaven is proud of us. Afterward, we played some Exploding Kittens which is a card game for those that don't know and ate some pizza.
It was a good week.
Love you all,
Elder Rich
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| Ice |
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| Pure ice |
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| Elder Tarone a prime example of the ice |
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| Finally a pic with Elder Parker |
