HI Mom.
It's been a long transfer here, or at least it felt that way. February took forever, but March is going pretty fast. I'll just get this out of the way.
Guess who has two thumbs and is getting transferred... (hint, usually you are transferred after three or four transfers in one area)... NOT THIS GUY. Yep, I'm still in the same area as where I was trained. Looks like I get six more weeks to teach and baptize S*.
This week was pretty slow on the lessons. We had two exchanges, one with Elder Rangel (who's leaving) and Elder Gutierrez (who's not), and another with Elder Houmand and Kimble (who are both staying). They were super fun. I stayed here for both and we just talked to everything that freaking moved. We also spent all week taking to everyone, so we ended up talking to 169 people!! We wanted to hit 170 on Sunday night (we set this when it became apparent that we weren't teaching anyone) and we could have done it, but we got stuck talking to this drunk man about how he knows cool Mormons (we didn't even stop him he was so obviously drunk) for like ten minutes, so we settled for 169.
Mike and his companion
We had exchanges with he district leader (Elder Rangel) on Tuesday. I went with Elder Gutierrez. It was fun. We didn't do much teaching. S* needed to hear about prayer, again, and we found out that V* (who's real name is J*) believes that Joseph Smith is a prophet, but she also believes that anyone in the world can be called of God.
On Wednesday we went to Elder Rangel and Elder Gutierrez's pad to end the exchange and then go do service, but we got there an hour early, so we bought pizza (one for each of us) from a little pizzeria shop in there area. It was soooooo good. I need to get the number so I can do a cheat meal right (it's free delivery). We accidently took two hours, so service didn't happen, but the Pizza was muy rico. Elder Rangel did some personal interviews after that with us (at 8 that night) and told me some really good stuff about how to grow the most on my mission. He also told me that I study really good. He said something like "We can always count on Elder Blanding to study it out before he takes action." Who knew I could study?
other then that nothing really of note happened this week, kind of slow. Saturday was Transfer calls and everyone was surprised to hear that I'm staying for five. Kind of grates on my patience, you might say I'm going a little stir-crazy, and the joke is I'm here until S* gets baptized, so don't expect me home for another three years, but I'll learn a lot here, I already have.
Oh, something really cool (and spiritual) I noticed yesterday during studies. For part of my studies I read a Book of Diligence (a Book of Mormon I've set aside for studying diligence) and on Saturday I read 1 Nephi 16:14 and from the phrase, "Keeping in the most fertile parts of the wilderness" I got this revelation. God knows all and will preserve them that follow him by guiding them to places where, if they work, they will be fed and find success. This taught me that God can teach us a everything from just one scripture, all we have to do is come ready to learn.
RETERN AND REPORT.
Weight 175 lbs!!! I'm doing it slowly :D
Spanish 3/7, but they were really good three days of Spanish :D
Elder Michael Blanding