23 November 2020

 

 Hey mom, its been a bit of a crazy week. On Tuesday we arrived, filled out a bit of paperwork, got in a mission van, had lunch went to the mission home, and got trained for about two hours. We had pizza for dinner then a testimony meeting before we left for a hotel for the night. We got up the next day, had breakfast, and headed back out to meet our companions. I got assigned to Elder Gilbert, who is the district leader. We got to do a little bit of shopping that day because I didn't bring food for the week, but I was a little overwhelmed and didn't think too much about what I was buying. The food for the week has been a little repetitive, and I look forward to shopping today. I got assigned to the Cedar Hills mission. My trainer told me this mission was kind of hard, because I heard the member population was about 95%.

For most of the week, we have been giving Member Missionary Messages to members about Temples and the Gathering of Israel. We leave them with invitations to help the work by sharing the message with others, nonmembers.

The next message we are supposed to share is going to be a Light the World message, which we start after Thanksgiving. We have a discussion with a nonmember today, the first with a nonmember I will do. She is young and is about to be baptized. We got to do two service projects last week.

We don't use cars in our mission, and we were waiting until today to pick up my bike, so there has been a lot of walking. Utah in Cedar Hills is, you know, hilly. Lots of hills, some of them are really steep. It does give good opportunity for pictures because you can actually look up and down at places. We also have these big mountains around the area.

Our mission is allowed to visit member homes still. A lot of missions don't have that, and I heard we were allowed to because we stuck strictly to the covid rules. It also means that we are not allowed to accept food from families. There was one point when a family offered us a store bought cake, they talked about how they hadn't touched it or anything... I think I felt a physical pain when we declined. They insisted, and if not for my companion, I would have completely caved.

The area has also been really cold. We do some of our messages at night, and with the long walks, the cold gets kind of intense. I think my coat is completely insufficient for this weather.

Well, that's most of what has been going on. Thanks for the emails!