Some Heroes Wear a White Shirt and a Name Tag: An Important Message

Dear Family and Friends:

Here is another week’s report:

9/6 Tuesday
Today we went to lunch with Brother Krecsman. He is the high councilman over missionary work. He is great. He is very worried about some elders in his home ward, because the lesson count has gone from 30 to 4... Big difference. We went to lunch to give correction and it was awkward for me haha. Elder Renel got mad at them because while we were talking to them one was watching TV in the restaurant. I hope that they are working as hard as they can, because we have an important message to share.

9/7 Wednesday
Today nothing exciting happened. We had a lesson with Sheryl, which went really well we taught the Book of Mormon lesson. She is excited to read it. The house she lives has lots of animals that are not cleaned up after them... I didn't know I was kind of a germ freak... She is great and progressing very slowly. She and the people in the house have lots of health problems and are always sick. Later that day a lady called to us "hey Mormon boys." We went and talked to her and she said she knew some about the Mormons and doesn't like the Mormon bible. She said to come back and talk to her. She said she wanted us to come and not another set of missionaries because we were good looking and she needed eye candy... She is an older lady and that was kinda weird.

9/8 Thursday
Tonight we had a lesson/visit with a less active couple (the Walker’s) that have fished Flaming Gorge and love old cars. They love me and Elder Renel and would talk to us for hours if they could. They talk to me about all of this old car stuff and I think it is interesting, but it all goes right over my head, but I pretend like I know what they are talking about and Elder Renel doesn't even try to act interested. haha. Sister Walker is a professional seamstress of like 30 years, so she takes care of all of our sewing needs. She is tailoring my suit this week. They are great, but don't want to come to church. I don't know why.

9/9 Friday
Today I was on an exchange with Elder Alison. He is from the Philippines and he is 26. He has been out for 16 months. We got along great and he actually thought my sarcasm was funny. We did a lot of
street contacting and talking with people. We were invited to go speak to a man’s church congregation that is in California but we had to tell it was a little far to go on a pedal bike.... We really didn't tell him that but we should have. We were supposed to have a lesson with Tina but she wasn't feeling well so it was canceled.

9/10 Saturday
Today was one of those days where mission life is crazy good. We decided to go on pedal bikes and as we were stopped at an intersection three people just came up to us and wanted to talk with us. The first lady I started to teach the Restoration to, while Elder Renel took a phone number of a lady and her daughter who wanted us to teach them and then Elder Renel finished writing and started to explain to a lady why we were so happy. She didn't understand why in this world we could be smiling and saying hi to everyone. She wanted to pray with us so we prayed together on the busiest and loudest intersection in our area haha. Right after all of that we were pedaling past a park and a man waved us over and told us he wanted to go to church. After we were done with him, we went to see Diane Miley and Leanna. Diane was the only one there and she wasn't feeling good so we gave her a blessing. We then talked to her about all sorts of things but mostly about God’s love. The spirit was definitely present in the room and it was a great meeting. Brother Porcaro came out with us tonight and we went and saw Lilly. She is recovering from shingles and was a little on the grouchy side, which probably wasn't the best day to talk about stopping the coffee drinking! She told us that she had down to one cup of coffee a day.... Which is great but she showed us the cup she uses and it is the largest mug I have ever seen haha. She told us that when we tell her to stop doing things it makes her want to do them, so we have to be very careful with our words. After the whole lesson of trying to get her to set a goal to cut down the drinking more (which she didn't want to do) she mentioned about not being able to drink hot chocolate. We told her she can drink hot chocolate and she said that she would just stop the coffee and drink hot chocolate. She asked if it is ok if she puts whipping cream on it! Lilly is so funny I could tell a ton of stories about her. The other day she was telling how she was watching a movie and it was talking about this storm that was going to hit New York. It scared her and she called her daughter who lives in New York to warn her about this storm. As she was talking to her daughter her daughter told her there was no storm on its way and she must be mistaken... Lilly then realized she had put in a movie and it was fake! Haha it was funny. She told us how embarrassed she was!

9/11 Sunday
We had four people at church. It was good to get some people that usually don't come to come. We played a prank on an elder in our apartment. He falls asleep really fast and we noticed that he only had one blanket so we turned the AC to 50 degrees and put the fan on him. He woke up and like was shivering and trying to get warm in his blanket. It was so funny hahaha.

The mission is great and fun. Hope you all have a good week.

Love you all!!!