Water on an Electrical Fire?!?!

Today is Elder Whatcott's birthday

Last week for P-day I went with the Mall to hang out with Elder Rushton mainly. A couple other missionaries came. I was trying to repair some of the damage that happened. He thought we were trying to blitz his area the other day to try to reach a quota. When really we just had nothing to do that day and wanted to help them find some people to teach.

It was fun. We went to Wendy's and they had smoke coming out of the flower bed. At first they thought it was a cigarette someone threw.  They poured some water on it. Then a lady came in flipping out. Yelling at the employees because they were ignoring a fire. It was hilarious. You could barely see any smoke. They poured some more water on it. Then they started to move stuff around and it turns out it's an electrical fire from the Exit sign. By this time the crazy lady had called the fire department and the huge firetruck came. We left but I'm sure the fire department did nothing. They just dug out the wires and snipped them or poured water or whatever. The lady was just crazy.

Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Eastman. I was in Kenmore. It was cool to be back in one of my old areas. We just were contacting a bunch of Less Active Members and had a lesson with one Less Active Member. He thought he had an 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon that belonged to one of the first 6 members of the Church. It looked like the 2nd edition Book of Mormon and the name was supposedly the granddaughter of one of the first members of the Church. Still cool nonetheless.

Wednesday we ended up pretty much spending the whole day planning out our Zone Meeting. We made these little cards that people could put in the front of their scriptures that has a list of possible chapters to leave people to read and ponder about until the next meeting. To help encourage missionaries to make sure they are leaving specific reading assignments. Those took forever because of limited computer access. Plus Elder Whatcott wanted to add people's favorite scriptures on the Atonement on the other side of the card. I'm not sure why... But he did. So we did. It took a while to get missionaries to text us back those scriptures. Then the printers were being really painful and printing the backside crooked. So they weren't lining up. We ended up going to Fed Ex Office store and printing them there and laminating them there. They still were slightly crooked but we were able to make them look good without it looking too obvious. We also got our #BuffNorth Shirts done and handed those out at Zone Meeting. As well as we made a 6 page pdf with quotes that missionaries can use as a resource for Facebook posts when we get back on Facebook.

We played Jeopardy for our training. That way we could cover a bunch of topics. The categories were iPad, Internet Proselyting, PMG, teaching and mystery. The mystery was minute to win it games. Soo funny! We did wrapping someone up in paper towels, a game of pulling out as many tissues out of the tissue box as quick as you can with one hand, arm wrestling (the contestants ended up being the sister missionaries) and how long you can hold a yoga pose. I got a great laugh out of those. People seemed to like it and even mentioned that it helped remind them of teaching/PMG/iPad things in a good way.

After Jeopardy we had zone council. Went pretty decently. We got some good feedback. Now our goals for the zone will be a zone goal (ie how many contacts our zone can get this week rather than individual areas). Things like that.

Went street contacting down Elmwood in Buffalo. Met John Lickers the Native American hobo. Met a sick atheist guy named Ryan that was super open and willing to listen. Handed out two Book of Mormons and a ton of cards.

We had a "BLC" as we call it. Buffalo Leadership Council. Basically us, the Buff South Zone leaders and the Sister Training Leaders which is the Clarence Sisters (Stoddard & Storms). We were planning out how to proselyte the Book of Mormon Musical that was coming to Buffalo to make sure we hit it with full force and lots of creative ideas. We had a whole thing planned and how to get missionaries there but then we called President and he quickly shot us down. He only wanted to have the downtown Elders there....

Gerald and Anthony the Recent Converts that are really struggling lately called us on Friday. They needed help shooting their video for their new YouTube channel. Gave us an opportunity to spend more time with them. They've definitely taken a step backward. But Gerald especially seems to want to step forward again and come back to church.

Exchanges up in Lewiston with Elder Fields. We ended up covering Niagara Falls that day. It was fun. Just a lot of finding. Niagara Falls on the American side is super rundown. Lots of houses and stores that are just boarded up and abandoned. Except what is lining the freeway that leads to the actual waterfall and the tourist trap immediately surrounding the waterfall.

Sunday was interesting! Mostly because the YSA was camping at the Hill Cumorah for a regional YSA activity called Gathering in the Grove. So we had to go to church in Amherst. It was interesting. First time in a real ward for 7+ months. The sisters were super lucky. Their investigating family of like 5 people were at church and their only struggle left for baptism was keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. So the talks were on keeping the Sabbath Day Holy (High Councilman) and 2 talks on baptism. Super right on topic.

96 out of 104

Story filled week:

First Monday evening we have a crazy storm. Just pooring rain. Elder Cramer breaks into our apartment and yells for us to come outside. So we all go outside and the 6 of us are playing soccer in the rain in our parking lot. We got pretty soaked pretty quick. It started to flood our parking lot as well. So it's the closest thing we could get to swimming. It was fun!

Tuesday we went to see Michael at McDonalds. Took Sean with us to help teach him. We met Michael's neighbors from Arizona. They were doing a church history tour and stopped by to see Michael. They were super nice. Bought us lunch. During lunch and the conversation there was a fight that broke out between two black girls that were the McDonalds employees. It was pretty crazy! Swearing a ton. The AZ couple was all "does this happen a lot?" It was funny. Yes, yes it does happen a lot. The one girl got dragged outside from their coworkers. They called the cops. But no worries, it's Buffalo so they cops didn't come for another 45 minutes. The girl is chillin' outside fuming on the phone and we can see her right through the window. So naturally Michael took a Book of Mormon out to the girl that was In the fight. She took it! He said that he just said something like "Hey, I can tell you're having a bad day. Read this. It'll help." Crazy! And he got her number. Pretty intense. He'll be good on his mission at street contacting. He's not afraid to talk to random people for sure!

Micheal left to go back to Arizona on Wednesday. It was pretty sad. He called us and he seems to be doing well. He is studying and around some good Mormon friends. He was telling me about a girl he knew that was in a friend group of about 12 really attractive BYU girls. He was saying he was going to hook me up. What a bro!

We also edited our video. We put together a video called "You're Always Welcome" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNgwiW5BhY - That link should work, if not blame our R.S. President. It was just a random activity we came up with for Missionary Activity Night. We just filmed a bunch of random stuff and put it to this song about how You're Always Welcome here. It turned out to be a decent success considering the lack of faith members had in us. It's not my proudest filming project, it was more thrown together. But it was fun! We might end up having to do another one.

We ended up handing out a lot of our "Come Join YSA" flyers that has all our activities. Part of our list of the whole stake that I'm trying to complete before I leave. And make 5,000 copies and give it to the Branch Presidency so that the information doesn't get lost. Ideally it'll be a decent guide for most of the people in the Stake that are YSA aged. We got info on a good amount of people and have left flyers on many-a-door.

The highlight of the week! Well, co-highlight. It ties. Aaron (Second Counselor in the Branch Presidency) and Bro Van Ry (1st Counselor) were just the most amazing people and took us to Texas de Brazil. How can I describe this Heaven? Well, you enter. It's a dimly lit restaurant. We go back to be sat at our table. There we receive this beautiful circular piece of plastic. One side is green. One side is red. We flip it green side up. Magically throughout the rest of the meal, while the green side is up, there is a constant flow of waiters carrying large skewers resembling swords with the most desirable of different types of meat, often wrapped in bacon, imaginable! Elder Whatcott  and I ate what felt to be our body weight in the most delicious steak, chicken, lamb, ribs, a bunch of other fancy sounding meat type that I had no idea but I just agreed when the waiters offered it and ate my way to a heavenly state. After the meal we just about had to be rolled out. We had an appointment with Sean afterwards too! I have never been so full in my life! Soooooooooooooo delicious! It's a little pricey too. Aaron and Bro Van Ry are just the bomb.com.

Second co-highlight is the sites. We were able to go with Niall to the sites. Just the three of us. Usually we want a member present but this time it was definitely going to be better for just the three of us. We ended up only having time to do the Joseph Smith Farm and Sacred Grove. Sister McLaren was there to do the Joseph Smith farm tour which helped because she knew Niall from before she got transferred. It also helped because she could be more straight up with him. We went into the Sacred Grove and gave him an opportunity to go off by himself and while we went off and prayed our guts out that he would have a good experience. He definitely did a lot of thinking but... He still has some major concerns. One being polygamy. Especially Joseph Smith's polygamy.

I survived with only one mosquito bite. But it was on my bone of my ankle. So It itches like CRAZY!

Stake Conference was this weekend. We had Elder Perkins from the Quorum of the Seventy. He seemed to be a legit guy. He kept mentioning some of the Apostles like they were homies. Must be weird to be in constant interaction with the Apostles.

Gerald the Recent Convert is having some concerns. Which is super concerning. He's been laying low lately. And Niall is definitely slowing down on progressing. So that has us nervous.

Next week we have zone meeting. We are trying to do a jeopardy to mix it up and make it more interesting for missionaries.

Street Contacting

Zone P-day last week was decently a success. It was pretty fun. Mostly games like charades and human foosball. We had a couple downers who just emailed all day. But that's okay. The rest of us had fun.

We had a couple fun opportunities to street contact this week. It really is becoming one of my favorite things to do. I think mostly because I feel like it is makes me feel like I'm doing more. Plus there are SOOO many people in Buffalo on the streets during the summer. Super dope. We even took Micheal street contacting a couple times. That was pretty funny. He is super comfortable with talking to random people BUT he is a little off on the doctrine at times. Oh well. He'll figure it out.

Wednesday we had exchanges with the AP's. They came blitzed our area. I went with Elder Cashmore. Good guy. Soft spoken. One of my more favorites so that was fun. We went to the more rural parts of Lancaster area to contact some less active members and active members that aren't in the YSA that we need to recruit. It was fun. However at 5:23 I realized that it was the first Wednesday of the month. Which means we had stake missionary correlation meeting. That started at 6:00. We were in Alden. Which was 20 minutes away. I call Whatcott. He freaks out. We both freak out. We are both mad because we were going to go to a steak dinner as a graduation party for Sean in the YSA. So we make it there at about 6:01. We were hurrying to cram in the numbers of the last month for our report. We borrowed President's keys and typed it up real quick by about 6:15. We got in there right as they were done with the opening hymn prayer and thoughts. Wasn't exactly the most appropriate but we made it! President didn't say anything so that's cool.

Thursday we went to a members home. This was super weird. 2 Sisters missionaries I had served around that have been home were at the members home. For dinner. They had came back to visit a girl going through the temple. It was weird. They had been home for a little bit. It was just weird to think about where I would go visit if I came back.

We taught Niall again. We watched the Restoration video (hour long one) to try and help him resolve his concerns and make him more comfortable about Joseph Smith. It went pretty well.

Sunday was really good with some really good talks from Sean who is going home/mission. And the two sisters missionaries. They did a really good job. A lot of things I needed to hear.

Then I skyped home! Pretty much the week right there. It was a slower week. However we really were trying to push all the missionaries to focus on getting Just ONE new investigator this week. Lowering that standard of excellence/expectation for them seemed to work. We tripled the number of new investigators this week than the average week. Elder Whatcott and I think that the expectations in the "Standards of Excellence" are currently too high and people don't feel that they are obtainable. But when they do feel they are obtainable they excel.

Sister Mom?

I had a guy in Medina tell me this week that those Mormons in Utah marry their daughters..... So.... Is mom my sister? Just tell it to me straight! Cuz I need to know!!

 We had specialized training this week at the Peter Whitmer Farm. You know, the place that the church was organized in this dispensation #NoBigDeal #JKHugeDeal. It was interesting! There were a lot of trainings that were for more of the non spiritual things. Had a training on exercising in the mornings. We had a training that was cooking food from a cookbook. Just some little things like that.

We had to do a quick 30 minute training. We quickly ran out of time. For our training we started out by having everyone sign a big #BuffNorth banner. It's pretty sick! On the back everyone is writing their name in a big list. That way it's like a history of all the missionaries that have served here. We hope it continues on. Then we found a place that makes t-shirts for $9 a pop. So we are getting zone t-shirts. They should be super awesome. We decided on which design then. Then we squeezed in a quick training on how to set appointments while contacting people. Instead of saying "when can you meet?" You say, "Can you meet Wednesday or Thursday?" Then "Afternoons or evenings?" Etc. until you get a specific appointment. Then we handed out some #BuffNorth Companionship Unity bags. They were just ziploc bags I made with get to know you question slips. For companionships to use while driving or in down time. Stuff like that.

Friday we had MLC (Mission Leadership Council). It was interesting. We did some basic Internet Proselyting training. The AP's were in charge of it and had us do a part of it. The ideas for Facebook part. It was just wanting us to read it out of the handbook. Then they talked about statistics of our mission. We average like 0.7 investigators per companionship per week. Our standards of excellence is 5 new investigators a week. We discussed changing those standards of excellence as most missionaries find it to be unobtainable. However, some of the other leadership people thought 5 was a good standard of excellence. So far it seems like they'll keep it the same. President mentioned the Boston Massachusetts mission (AJ Halling's Mission) had 75% of their Recent Converts submit temple names last year. We had 3%. We were the 2nd lowest in the America Northwest Region. It was some Interesting statistics. I've been really impressed with AJ's mission as I've read his weekly letters. It's ran really differently.

The ride back from MLC is always fun. We get the sisters to chillax a little and have normal conversation. We called Sister Stoddard, Momma Stoddard. Because she was driving the minivan with the 4 of us in the back. She looked like such a soccer mom. It was hilarious. We also got Paula's donuts for the trip. Which are super delicious. It's the donut shop I used to live next to in Kenmore (Buffalo).

Exchanges in Medina on Saturday! We blitzed it. I met a member that served his mission here. It was interesting because he confirmed some of the rumors I've heard about "Old NYRM." It was an interesting conversation. We talked to a bunch of different people and invited them to the Medina Branch meeting. They hold a branch meeting the first Sunday of the month. The other times they drive 20 minutes to the Lockport Ward. They are hoping to create a Medina Branch officially soon. Right now it's a pilot program thing. I went with Elder Gaudete. He is from Colorado and is a Recent Convert of just over a year or so. Good kid. Good kid. He is new but catching on quick. He went out with missionaries all the time back home.

Sunday was interesting! It ended up being a day packed of stuff last minute. We ended up having all these firesides that we had no idea about. Church was also for seniors in high school this week as well. So yeah. Then afterwards we had the Break the Fast. Then we had a youth fireside meeting and after that we had a worldwide YSA Broadcast. So it was just studies then at the church all day. The Youth Fireside president called us that morning asking us to come and get other missionaries to come. He said he was talking. Then he ended up not showing up and we didn't really understand why we were supposed to be there. However, it was a little FHE style lesson thing from President Pace so it was totally worth being there. He had some very good points. Then we ordained Micheal to the office of Elder and gave him the Melchizedek Priesthood so that he can submit his papers for the mission. The Worldwide YSA Broadcast didn't finish before 9 so we ditched out before it was over. It was pretty good for the part I saw. They are definitely doing more with technology as they do these broadcasts with little slides and stuff. It's pretty cool!

We are kind of bummed we didn't get a chance to talk about Pageant ideas this MLC. Because the first week of June is really pushing it. So... We might start taking some initiative and get things going. Hopefully we can do some cool things like maybe parades. Or at least just proselyte at the parades.

Super busy week. Definitely tired. Today is our monthly zone P-day that we are kind of allowed to have. We just had to find the loopholes to get everyone here within the mile limitation and a senior couple so that the sisters can be there and it's not inappropriate. Hopefully it's fun and everyone gets a good P-day of relaxing done.

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Being in the YSA can be kind of expensive. Since we cover so much area we have to really plan to have meals at home. Because we tend to be 15 miles away from our apartment. And YSA people like to meet at like fast food places. And I feel bad sitting there using their places without buying something. So I try to just grab something off of the dollar menu.

Monday for FHE we did basically human sized Hungry Hungry hippos. It was pretty intense. So there were a TON of balloons in the middle. Elder Whatcott and I were volunteered to be the dummies on the wheels. It was intense. ha! They would push us out there and we'd try to collect balloons on the baskets as they pulled the rope to bring us back in. When you pop a balloon there were letters in it for the other team members to gather up and use in a hangman. The idea was to find out the location of a "treasure" aka candy/food. It was fun!

Transfers took up all of last Tuesday. Getting everyone there and getting everyone's stuff to their places. We did it pretty efficiently though! Sister Stoddard was crying a lot that Sister McLaren was leaving. But she has seemed to adjust to Sister Storms really well. Everyone else seems to be adjusting pretty well.

Wednesday was super successful at the booths. We handed out another 200+ cards between us two and had a super sick display. Plus we got about 3 peoples' info AND talked/taught a couple few more people. Of course, I am always one that tries to teach the members. A member came up (He is married so I didn't know him) and I started to ask him if he had every heard of the church. He said he has gone to the church in the Philippians. I quickly found out that was when he was on a mission to the Philippians (however you spell it).

               

We taught Micheal twice this week. He is getting close to go on a mission. We are just trying to roleplay with him the first 3 lessons. Bless his trainer's heart. He is a good kid with a good testimony but he doesn't know a lot of the basics. He is definitely improving a ton though! He is awesome. We met at his house instead of Burger King this week. Because his aunt wasn't there. His brother was playing Halo/Call of Duty/Battlefield something... It was interesting because I haven't thought much about video games in the last 2 years. And turns out a bunch have came out. Micheal loves Halo.

Had the most awkward dinner appointment of my life. With the parents constantly yelling at their kids more than what was reasonable. With the husband making snide remarks to his wife the whole time. It was just super super super awkward. We were ready to get out there as quick as we could.

In YSA you are always adjusting things last second. Because YSA people are super random with their times and stuff. So on Saturday we had to completely call an audible for our day. Luckily people were flexible. There was a member that was having a birthday lunch in that our branch presidency's second counselor thought we should attend because it was looking like not many people were going to show up. Which wasn't too bad! But it was a sushi place so it wasn't a cheap lunch! It was pretty nice. I also learned of a sushi buffet!!!!!! Like 11.99 for lunch. Just like the sushi place back home that name is escaping me right now. SUPER excited. I might save up and find an excuse to spoil myself there sometime before I leave.

We also had regional stake conference. Elder Anderson and Hales. Plus some area 70 and I think his wife. But it was pretty good! It was interesting because the meeting started out local with a local song and music. We had President Pace at ours. Which was awesome because he is a stud. He gave a talk. Then we turned on the projector and had the regional stuff. Then the closing hymn and prayer was local as well. It was interesting!

Pretty much it for the week. Same old Same old. But a good week.