Book of Mormon Giveaway

Monday was a huge hit! The marshmallow war with the PVC pipe went great. We had tables overturned everywhere in the gym for obstacles. It was great. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it. We recruited the senior couple from Niagara Falls (the ones that hooked us up with the Lindsey Stirling) because they are much more chill and fun. The other senior couples were always awkward and just seemed to be annoyed that they had to babysit us. Which is reasonable because it is annoying that we need babysitters. It was super funny because we had a barricade of tables so everyone burst into song from Les Miserables. "Red! The blood of angry men!" It was hilarious. The clean up was kind of rough. All the marshmallows stuck to the ground and a ton got smashed in. So we had to do some quick scrubbing. But with 20 people it went by pretty fast. The floor was covered in marshmallows. I bought 5 bags of mini marshmallows for it and we used them all. The funniest part was how much the sisters were getting into it.

Tuesday we spent a lot of the day preparing for Zone Conference. It was a little frustrating as preparing for Zone Conference doesn't increase any key indicator. Which is TOTALLY fine for me. I'd rather fulfill a purpose than have a higher weekly call in report (which we ended up having anyway). Some would disagree though and got in a bad mood to "waste" all day preparing for zone conference.

Zone conference seemed super long but it went pretty decent. We set a goal for 350 Book of Mormons handed out. Which I think is a good solid goal. That ends up being about 2-3 a week per companionship. Which I think is very reasonable but will also get them focused on handing out Book of Mormons. Much better than the other zone's goals for 1500, 1000, 1001. The mission goal was 1000. It's just really important to set a good goal that the missionaries can accomplish and feel accomplished. We set too many goals too often that are setting ourselves up for failure and just discourages missionaries. I had to bear my testimony at the end of zone conference.  I just bore my testimony revolving around the picture of "Faith is the power. Love is the motive..." that I gave everyone. For Zone Conference rather than training how the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion which everyone already knows I just gave out a ton of different tools that can help them to hand out more Book of Mormons and make the ones they hand out more effective. So we gave them Book of Mormon inserts that had some suggested readings on it. We made sure everyone had one of those laminated cards to keep in their own scriptures that had a list of chapters from the Book of Mormon to leave the people they teach with to read between lessons. We also gave them little organizers for their car to hold their Book of Mormons and other supplies. I made them out of the boxes that the Book of Mormons come in and used the flaps to make dividers then super glued it. Then we also made little posters for everyone that had a spot where they could set a companionship goal for the number of Book of Mormons handed out and then they would color in a giant Book of Mormon as they handed them out. Companionship goals to help the larger zone goal. Flooding the Mission with the Book of Mormon. It was a lot of work to get all those done but I thought it was worth the time and every penny.

Exchanges with Elder Rushton on Thursday. That was great! It was super nice and relaxing.  He is such a solid guy. We went street contacting for a good portion of the day. It was great. Handed out a ton of cards and 11 Book of Mormons. Which I was super happy about because it helped pump of Elder Rushton for the challenge. Helped him to really get excited and feel like he can do it. I also had my first Philly steak sub at ETS (Elmwood Tacos & Subs). It was good. But wasn't worth $10.

We ended up street contacting for 3 days in a row. That was rough. Not nearly as fun. But Saturday I did hand out 14 Book of Mormons. So that's pretty cool.

So we ran into Hannah again on Elmwood. We seem to always run into her. She was sober this time. She was on her way to the bar. She started teasing us for always being on Elmwood. We had a good chuckle and she asked some questions about being a missionary. Then she found out we aren't supposed to hug people. So she gave Elder Haws a hug. He turned a good couple shades of red which I got a good laugh out of. Then Hannah hugged me. It was weird. Mostly because I haven't hugged a girl in like 2 years. But for the record! It actually isn't against the rules for us to hug a girl. It's just culturally frowned upon. It doesn't say anywhere in the entire white handbook. Either way it was an interesting, hilarious conversation. Her friend was there and it was a good contact with her and helped her understand a little about Mormons. She was proud of herself for "sending us to Hell for being hugged."

Finished the week off with 33 Book of Mormons handed out. Which was a ton of hours put into doing that. A little disappointed to hear that they are raising the mission goal to 5,000 Book of Mormons within this 90 day period. It's ridiculously high and pretty much requires us to ignore everything and spend all the time handing out Book of Mormons. Plus, they also in the same breath are telling us that they only have a couple more cases of Book of Mormons left. So we are going to end up handing out all these Book of Mormons and not have enough left to give to investigators down the road.

For Father's day the whole relief society did this all day thing for Church. They made homemade bread for Sacrament. They taught all the lessons. Then they made us dinner after church! It was super nice of them. I felt a little bad because I wanted to help. But it was their future father's day gift to all the guys.