Blogging it up...

I`ve been out for over 4 months! That`s crazy! 

This week was pretty great!

Members in our ward gave us steaks! We cooked them Friday night for dinnerbecause we didn`t have an appointment. I grilled the steaks and they turned out great! All 4 of us Elders were at the apartment and enjoyed them.

We went over to a member`s home who is moving. They were pretty much giving away all their stuff so they didn`t have to move it. We were able to get a lot of cool things! They gave us their table and chairs, which is great because we`ve broken 3 of our wooden dinning room chairs. They also gave us an old air compressor which will be awesome for bike tires!

We have an investigator who is progressing awesomely! We didn`t think he was going to take the lessons seriously at all. His wife is a member and is a great lady. He just always took everything about the church as a joke. He started taking the lessons as a begged favor from her. Now he`s doing it for himself and actually considering being baptized! It`s been so incredible to see his growth and the Holy Ghost touch his heart.

Flippin` e-cigs. Everyone thinks that because it doesn`t have nicotine it`s alright to smoke them. IT`S NOT! They don`t understand that in the word of wisdom it talks specifically about addictive substances. They smoke the e-cig constantly and are obviously addicted to the fixation of smoking. Plus it`s still putting water vapor in their lungs which causes pneumonia. People don`t seem to realize this. It`s frustrating... But hey, i still love them and encourage them to strive to live the churches standards because I know it`ll cause them to have the best life possible.

Well have a great week! i love you all!

-Elder Tribe

My cookies are in high demand!

I can't believe that another week has come and gone so quickly! Sometimes I feel like the days drag on, especially between the hours of 1 to 4, but the weeks really do fly by!

Tracting. We've been tracking a bunch this week. One day we tracted for about 4 hours. It's giving us results though! We got a new investigating family!! He's a disabled ex-semipro football player. He's a BIG dude. He's one of the sweetest, most humble guys I've ever met. His wife is super nice as well. They have 4 daughters. They're all under the age of 13. Just an awesome family.

"Weed is God's drug for me and for you. And everyone else isn't suppose to judge us!"

*awkward pause*

"Wait you guys don't smoke weed do you? Ahh (bad word). Now I feel all bad inside guys. I'm going to go smoke some more. I'll see you guys later."

This was our conversation with a nice gentleman in budget sweets. Turns out he's one of the biggest weed suppliers in the area. He assumed we knew that and we went to him for weed haha. Also, it turns out he's not interested in learning about the gospel unfortunately.

My cookies are in high demand! We have an incentive program set up for members who help us with missionary work. Those who we give assignments to, and they accomplish them, we give them cookies. Well apparently word has gotten around that I make some pretty good cookies. Now everyone wants cookies! Hopefully we can make this work to our advantage and get more members trying to do some missionary work!

Neil A. Maxwell in 1974 said, "My friends, there are footprints to follow where we must go--made not by a leader who said, safely from the sidelines, “Go thither,” but by a leader who said, “Come, follow me.” And our mortal leader is a prophet who is showing us how to lengthen our stride."

Jesus Christ is our ultimate example. He gave us a perfect demonstration of how we should live our lives. As we strive to become more like him, we can take the teachings of modern day prophets and prophets of old to help us. Thomas S. Monson is called by God to instruct us in this time how we can improve ourselves to better become more like Christ. Take his advice. It will bless your lives exponentially.

I love all of you guys! Have a great week! :)

-Elder Tribe

Wow, it's Monday already!

Wow it's Monday already! This week seemed to cruise by! It's so nice having a full week! No holidays to stay in, just out and about all day everyday. I'm sure in a few months I'll wish for a holiday, but for now I'm enjoying being able to be out proselyting :)

Story for the week. There is a very large, elderly black lady who we visit every now and then. She's not 100% there mentally. She told us that she she'd like to marry me in the "New BIG Mormon Church" aka the temple. So I'm kind of a hot commodity down here ;)

In other news, we lost our most promising investigators. 3 of them told us to stop coming. 2 because of smoking and 1 because of CCV. CCV is Christ's Church of the Valley. They're a giant super church that preaches anti-mormon things. Our investigator told his preacher that he was meeting with us and they offered him a position in the church if he'd stop meeting with us. So that's a bummer. We're continually looking for new people to teach. It's been a struggle to find someone to listen for more than 2 lessons. They get bored, don't want to change, don't want to keep commitments, or any combination of the 3. It's rough. We're staying positive though and pushing to find those solid people who want to learn!

Love you all!

-Elder Tribe

This week was great!

This week was great! I'm continuing to love it down here! It's been
down to 28 degrees at night and it feels wonderful to bike in! People
are in big coats during the day when it's 50 degrees out and I'm still
cruising around in my short sleeve shirt. People like to question how
I'm able to do it which starts conversations. Hopefully it leads to
some investigators!

My New Years was quite the party! I was in bed by 9:30!! That was
pretty great! We played card games that night because we weren't
allowed to go out. New Year's Day was our planning day. We did a lot
of planning. Solid 4 and a half hours of it. It's was great as well! I
always feel better when we have a solid planning session and we know
what we're going to do. We played cards and an improv game after our
planning. That was pretty fun!

We had a pretty good little down pour this week. It rained during the
night and we got a decent amount of it. Elder Burbank and I didn't
process that rain = a flooded wash... We went through the was and it
was few inches deep with water. It was cold that day so we had jackets
on. We decided that we were going to just blast through it and take
off our jackets when we get to our appointment. So we did and got
pretty wet and muddy. It was like riding through a river. It was way
fun! We got to our appointment and took of our muddy, wet jackets,
then realized our pants got pretty muddy as well...not the best idea
after all. We used our jackets to wipe off our pants the best we
could. Now we know it's worth the extra 10 minutes to go around on the
streets than cutting through the wash on a rainy day. Still it was a
fun time so it wasn't a total loss!

I'm continually amazed with the scriptures and the power they have. We
were in a lesson that felt like it was going no where. We were
explaining the same thing over and over and the guy would just stop
listening half way through our explanation. It was pretty frustrating.
I got the prompting to have him read a scripture that talks about the
topic we were explaining, so I did. Suddenly it all made sense to him
and the spirit was super strong in the room! It was a great experience
and a good reminder that the scriptures are truly the word of God.
They bring the spirit stronger than my words can and the spirit will
testify of truth.

Well I love you guys! Have a great week!

-Elder Tribe