Random Week

This was one of the more random weeks for sure.  They did get some HQ referrals from Book of Mormon Musical. So definitely worth our time.

Tuesday we went to Medina to blitz their area. We have to do exchanges with them but it's far away so we just both go and blitz. It usually turns out good. Elder Sevy and I stayed up way way late just talking. He has great ideas and great ingenuity. Smart kid. I enjoyed talking to him. We went to the outskirts and tried to contact some people for him. We got a new investigator on the streets. That was cool! He has some good ideas on how to help the mission.

Okay... I want to preface this next part with we got President's permission. Tuesday night we get the text from Matt Donner. "Do you want to go to Lindsey Stirling Concert tomorrow?" Well duh freakin' ya! But we told him there was no way we could get permission. Then he tells us the Lewiston Elders are going. And I was all nervous because I didn't want to have to tell the Lewiston Elders they can't go. TURNS OUT THEY GOT PERMISSION! The Senior Couple totally convinced President to let us go. Crazy, I know! So we called him and he said we could go. So Niall and Matt were both there. Which was super sick. Plus the N Tonowanda and Lewiston elders brought some Less Active Members and investigators. So we were all interacting with them. It was good. We also were being stared at by like every single person in the place so it definitely got us noticed. And of course, Lindsey was awesome! Super impressive. Super modest. Just awesome. Matt gave a Book of Mormon to the opening act girl. That was super awesome! He's such a stud. And we only really got stopped by 1 of the staff who thought we were selling stuff.

I promise I'm still on a mission. On Thursday we ended up having this elaborate gun war for our activity. We made blow guns with PVC pipe and made little darts with sticky note paper and hot glue. It was intense. The whole gym was covered with tables, chairs and boxes and we played capture the flag and then just like normal last team standing type of game. There ended up being a little drama associated with it because our Unit Mission Leader is still meeting with us. But he isn't coming to church and the branch council is frustrated with him and what not. It's hard to explain. But it was a little bit of an annoyance to be caught in the middle of it all.

Friday while we were out street contacting we ran into our Unit Mission Leader's friend, Hannah. She was in the bar but ran outside to mess with us a little. She was being pretty feisty and whatnot. She was just teasing us about handing out Book of Mormons on the street again. She ended up taking a Book of Mormon (and my pen) and a restoration pamphlet. Gave her a Mormon.org card. Marked a favorite scripture. Good stuff. But Two ladies were eavesdropping and started to ask questions on how we knew each other. Then it started to get awkward. Because then they were all "well get her number!" And so I try to use it as a teaching opportunity to explain how missionaries don't date for their 2 years... Etc etc... Well Hannah jumps in and starts saying we can't do anything until we are married. So I correct her by saying we can go on dates, hang out, kiss, etc. Just no sex until you're married. Then.... She tried to kiss me (kind of!). She like took a step forward (there was railing in between us) and leaned on it and was all "well then kiss me!" At this point I'm trying not to laugh really hard. Elder Haws says "Please don't!" She was just being feisty and was a little tipsy. So I just blew it off and was all "haha! Not while I'm a missionary." And then we found an excuse to leave. I found the whole situation super humorous and got a good chuckle out of it. Elder Haws was a little less amused but mostly because the two ladies were harassing him for not handing out Book of Mormons when I had handed out 2 right there. Needless to say, that quickly jumps to one of my more awkward stories of the mission. Having a drunk girl try to get me to kiss her. #MissionaryProbs

Saturday we had a site trip/temple trip with the YSA. We went to the sites with Matt instead of the temple. It was pretty good! Except they are changing up the sites. Instead of a tour the sisters just stand outside the buildings and give you a few details then you go inside.  It's hard to explain if you don't know how the sites go. It was just way less of a spiritual experience. Sad to see the change.

Basically this week was super super weird. It was just kind of a confusing "Did that just happen?" Kind of week. But it did happen. Ha!

This next week we have Zone Conference. We have to give a training on the Book of Mormon. The whole conference is revolved around the mission goal to give out 1,000 Book of Mormons. Which is not too many at all. President keeps telling us that the Rochester East Zone set a zone goal of 1,500 Book of Mormons. Yes, more than the mission goal. But that averages out to 2 BoMs per companionship per day. Including Sundays and P-days for 90 days straight. The goal time frame is 90 days. We are going to encourage our zone to set a goal much smaller. Like 300. That is much more achievable and can give our missionaries a sense of accomplishment. Rather than another unrealistic goal that we don't accomplish.

I've got planned these organizers for the cars to help everyone have supplies in hand as well as keeping them in good condition. Lots of Book of Mormons get ruined because they fall on the floor. Also made a little mini poster for each companionship to set their own companionship goal for Book of Mormons handed out. It's a picture of a Book of Mormon that they can color in as they progress to their own goal. I also made some inserts that we can put in the front as "suggested reading" with page numbers so people have ideas on what they can read to see what it's about. It has stuff similar to "Faith - Alma Chapter 32 (page 256)". I am also going to laminate a couple more cards since there are new people so everyone has a card with the list of chapters and basic topics that they can use to make sure they leave reading assignments with those they teach. I'm kind of wanting to add the twist of having the zone make sure they also flood their teaching pool with the Book of Mormon. Emphasize reading the Book of Mormon with those they are teaching. Stuff like that.

Book of Mormon Musical

Elder Haws came to replace Elder Whatcott. He is also new to being zone leader so I have to explain that to him. It has put him a little bit in shock for the whole week. Mostly because the schedule has more meetings and can be a lot more last minute adjustments. It's not very structured schedule. He also has been adjusting to some of the little responsibilities we have to do. I also took him street contacting a lot and he was a bit gun shy on that one as well.

Elder Brandon Haws. From Chandler, Arizona. He went to Snow College for a semester before coming on his mission. He has been out for just under a year. His cousins are Tyler and TJ Haws (BYU basketball players). He gets bugged by people about that a lot. Well, by Mormons who know who they are. He also looks like a German Nazi. Mainly the boy from the Sound of Music that sings 16 going on 17. He had multiple drunk girls in downtown Buffalo tell him that's who he looked like. He also had a 16 year old drunk girl hitting on him. She got up real close to him and looked like she was just going to try and kiss him. Which from my point of view was the  most hilarious thing I had ever seen. I was kind of hoping that she would try to pull a move so I could harass him about it for the next 5 weeks. Oh well. She ran off with her other drunk friends.

MLC was this week. We got to drive a brand new car back. 2015 Toyota Corolla. It was super sketchy to drive though because I was afraid to scratch a brand new car. But it was way too nice for missionaries to drive... But however they do it, they've found the way that is the least costly.

Lots of street contacting this week. But after looking at the final numbers this week, we gave out more than 500 cards. Our total number of "Contacts" were 530ish. With that we gave out easily over 20 Book of Mormons. Also got a few people's numbers. Sadly, pretty much all except 1 promising one are people that we have to refer to the Buffalo Elders because they are not YSA. However, if we were to count contacts by the definition that our mission counts them as then we would have had easily over 1,500 contacts. The average area gets about 30 a week. So that was super exciting to show that we were working hard.

However... About 350 of those 500 come from the Book of Mormon musical! Gotta love it. Some super fun stories. We only ended up going 3 nights. Mostly because of schedules and stuff. But also because of President. But technically downtown Buffalo is our area as well (We cover the whole stake) So.... We went down to join the efforts. It was super successful! The first night we actually met the owner and managers of Shae's Theater. Also, we definitely got our picture taken by a newspaper guy. So that might definitely be in the newspaper this Wednesday. We'll keep an eye out for it. They also invited us to the cast's after party. So we poked in and grabbed some food that they had. Briefly talked to the cast. They were super nice. Also super flaming. BUT nice. They asked us some questions and we got the opportunity to correct them on some of the doctrinal things. They actually for the most part were doctrinally accurate. They also were telling us that they have some lines that they improv. So we gave them some suggestions of things we say a lot. And.... THEY USED THEM!!!!! Matt, our investigator, went Saturday night and he said they said "Wow! What a blessing!" Which is one of our suggestions that they loved. It is kind of an inside joke because President says it all the time when he doesn't know what else to say to missionaries. So all of the missionaries say it. So I got a good kick out of the fact that I impacted the Book of Mormon musical. Let's see... Some other fun stories from the nights.... One gay guy told me I was cute. So that was cool. I had a couple people take pictures with me. One was a girl that looked my age that was super attractive so I wasn't complaining. We handed out a TON of Book of Mormons. Like over 120 EASILY between us and the Buffalo Elders. So that was super legit. It would have been more effective if more missionaries had been there like we had planned. But oh well, President realizes that now.

The managers were super nice to us. They would poke their head out the door 5 minutes before it ended and say "Guys, 5 minutes! Almost show time!" They were super okay with us proselyting outside as long as we were a certain distance from the doors (Mainly to keep foot traffic flow). They also brought us cookies one night.

Elder Crowley and Durfee had a rough week. Durfee lost his wallet one day. The next Elder Crowley's bike got stolen while we were at the musical proselyting. It was locked up and only 20ft away from us. But they cut it and grabbed it while we were distracted talking to people. Super rough.

Our missionary activity this week was Water Balloon volleyball. Super fun. No one out here seemed to know what that was. We didn't get much of a turnout. But I think it'll help set the stage to help people know that we are really going to step up our game for missionary activities so they can bring their friends to it.

This week we planned on doing marshmallow guns (PVC pipe) but with these stick note dart contraptions. However, that might be getting shut down because of some really confusing reasons. We were talking about it at Branch Council and they were kind of shutting us down. It's mostly because our Branch Mission Leader is borderline Less Active lately. And they are struggling with him but were taking it out on us. We just are confused on what budgets are allowed to spend on activities. Our mission leader knows that but hasn't said much on it. And we are just trying to make things happen because when we let them just do it all, it doesn't get done. Kind of been a struggle.

Two of our Recent Converts are really struggling. Gerald and Anthoney. They are both drinking heavily and not coming back to church. Just lots of Word of Wisdom problems. And the one is threatening to leave the church. So that is super discouraging.

We are just trying to do a lot of finding. Because everyone either moved or are dropping us.

The LAST transfer

Transfers are super crazy. It'll make for an interesting transfer. My new companion is Elder Haws. He is new to being a Zone Leader as well... And that's about all I know about him. To our surprise we are keeping sisters in the district. We are losing Sister Stoddard and gaining Sister Johnson. Other than that there are a ton of boring changes. Cramer is gone. Alty-baby (Elder Alt) is gone. Whatcott is gone. Basically everyone fun in the zone is gone. haha! So hopefully some of these new guys are fun.

Whatcotts birthday was Monday. It was a full day event. We ended up going golfing so that was pretty fun! That evening was FHE so we all signed a birthday card for him and shared our favorite Whatcott story/#WhatcottProb. We then played life sized clue that was "Who killed Whatcott?". It ended up being the Relief Society President in the mothers room with a cookie.

Exchanges with Alt were super cool this week. He is such a sick kid. He drove super expensive cars in Las Vegas before his mission. Like where people do the ride alongs in corvettes? He drove. He just did super cool crazy stuff.  Exchanges with Noble was a little more of a struggle. He has kind of been a pain to everyone. Elder Alt is a great companion and elder Noble just wasn't treating him well. It was just hard to get through to him.

Street Contacting on Elmwood in downtown. Drunk guys had us sit down and just chat with them. It was funny. Right outside of a coffee shop. That is a sick place to street contact as there are just tons of people around. We tried to contact like 60 people in just an hour. It was sweet!

Stevenson's baptism was this week. It was a family the sisters had been working with in the Amherst Ward. Less Active parents and oldest son. But 6 nonmember kids (1 is 8yrs old). The father ended up baptizing and confirming them. It was an amazing experience! It was really cool to actually see the gospel bring a family together like that. Obviously I didn't work with them but I was familiar with them along the journey as the sisters were teaching them. It was just a super spiritual baptism, sooooo many people showed up in support. It was amazing. His confirmation blessings were just super simple and heartfelt. The family needs a lot of assistance but it's definitely a family that will grow in the gospel and be a huge building block in the church.

I don't think I've explained how throwing things away here works. So basically, if you want to throw something away, you just put it on the side of the road. Then the garbage man takes it or random people come take it. So we see a fire pit.... So naturally we take it. (Not stealing, it was garbage). So we had a missionary activity for ysa and roasted marshmallows in it in the grass behind the church. Then we also used it Saturday night after we all got home behind our apartment. Super fun!

Ward Correlation with the branch mission leader. He realizes that Sister Stoddard is NOT fond of being referred to by her first name, Ashlie. So... Naturally, he only used her first name the whole meeting. She was fuming! Super funny!!