Walked on water! It was frozen, but hey.

I guess in some areas of the world, when these months come around, Water takes on the unusual property of becoming solid. And cold. The things you learn on a mission. 

Anyway, it was pretty cold this week, what with the highs being 25 or so. It was still sunny, which makes no sense in my head, but whatever. 

Numbers-wise, this was probably the worst week of my mission. I have had better DAYS before. But as usual, there's always something awesome at one point or another.  

So Monday, we went to Riceland rice factory, and met with Miss Arkansas Rice to talk about rice and eat rice aand look at rice and joke about rice and cook rice and take pictures with rice... Yeah, it was a lot of rice. But it was pretty fun. Then I took elder diaz to Chick Fil A for the first time in his life, since that needed to happen. We went three more times this week. I've created a monster. 

Tuesday was the beginning of the famine. We tried seeing a bunch of people, but they either weren't home or dodged out on us. We did go and see a member from Blytheville who was in the hospital with a collapsed lung, because he didn't have anyone to visit him.

Wendesday we had zone meeting in Searcy, which was pretty good. We did an activity that I found to be a great learning opportunity. They divided us into groups, with one leader that they had prayerfully chosen. I was the leader of one of them. They had us go through an obstacle course of sorts that had us make decisions about obeying the rules, proselyting, studies- basic missionary stuff. The decision was left up to the group leader, but the team could give suggestions, and our path was different depending on what we chose.  It was judged based on time and what we got done. My group made all the good decisions, and we got points for that, but we had the worst time by far. I was overthinking the decisions, even though I knew what was right. I was glad to be the person who made all the decisions, because it taught me that I need to improve on doing the right thing immediately, rather than hemming and hawing.
Thursday was another slow day. We tried to go finding, but it was super windy and cold, and we both almost died. One old man talked to us for literally 2 hours about anything and everything except our message. Thankfully, he let us inside for that, or we would have gotten frostbite. We had a good lesson with a teenage girl and her adult cousin about the plan of salvation, those two found it really interesting. We have high hopes for them. 

Friday was yet another uneventful day. Elder Diaz made the poor man's version of tiramisu in the morning, with pancake mix for the cake and a mix of dark hot chocolate powder and Martinelli's for the coffee. It was pretty darn delicious though. We din't get to see anyone at all that day, as much as we tried to. 

Saturday was busy, but with other stuff. In the morning we helped take out branches and leaves from a lady's yard, which wasn't that hard with all the people we had. Then we ran back to the chapel to have a lesson with don. He was sick with vertigo all this week, which was rough. He's doing much better now. We finished talking to him about temples, and he really wants to go. We want to set up an interview with him soon. Then we went and helped someone move from here to Paragould, about 30 minutes away. They moved to a third floor apartment. So, we got our cardio in for the day. 

Sunday was pretty average. They said it was going to freeze, but actually the rain melted what ice there had been before.  We only got to see two investigators that day, but they were the best. Ever. So here's the story: Our first week, we were in Walmart buying food when one of the employees came up super excited. He had been taught by missionaries before, and wanted us to come back. so it took six weeks of conflicting schedules before we could actually come in. This man is SO prepared. He understood everything we taught, and already believed in most of it. He read ahead while we were talking and made comments about the story of Joseph Smith. He really identifies with him from what he said. 

Well, that was my week! OH and transfers! We are both staying here. Sister Howton is going away, so we will have two new sisters here! We will see if they measure up. :P

Have a good week!