Wait, Labor Day already? (note from Mom, no it's next Monday)

Hey guys! it was a great bike week. It's starting to cool off now, so that is wonderful for us!

Monday was super fun! We didn't do anything specific, we just went to the church, played some dodgeball, goofed around, mad some brownies for Elder Schoenfeld's birthday (he didn't even show up, the punk) and in general had a lot of fun. We were going to go out pretty far, but since Schoenfeld didn't show up to fix my bike, I couldn't really travel much. So we tried some people close to home.

Tuesday was district meeting! It was a good one, too. We got a lot done, and I think everyone got a lot out of it. Our Spanish Zone Leader, Elder Jenkins, came over from Memphis, which was cool! He gave a really good discussion on how to make studies more effective. With being a language training missionary, we have 2 more hours of studying than a regular English elder that we have to do every day. Needless to say, it's kind of hard to stay focused. So we got a lot of good suggestions for that! After the meeting, we went out teaching with Jenkins. It was nice, since we could split into 2 groups we could do twice as much work! We found a TON of people, and had some good lessons with the people we already had! We let him go at dinner time. We were going to go out with a manner, but he forgot and when we called to see where he was he was out shopping. Sooo we went out on bikes. Slowly. We had managed to find one gear on my bike that wouldn't make the chain jump off, so as long as I stayed on that I was fine. We tried some people by our place we had found recently and then bought some medicine, since both contreras and I were catching a cold.

Wednesday was a little slower, but still good! We fixed Contreras' flat tire (our bikes are having SO many problems right now) and then went to find some more people. After that, we went to dinner at S's house. She made some super good mole. (Pronounced "molay." Not the animal :P) after that we had the Book of Mormon class, which went really well! We had one of the sisters' recent converts, the branch president's wife, and L. The sisters showed up too. Good news: Sister Bennett is no longer on bedrest! She can use crutches now, which are super exhausting coming off of a week of not walking apparently. Other good news: they brought us some leftovers from the dinner they'd had with a member! So we went home from the class with high spirits and BBQ. Good combo in my opinion. 

Thursday was GREAT. I had the privilege of going to the Mission Leadership Council meeting. Normally, it is only the zone leaders, APs, and sister training leaders that can go. But this time, they invited some random missionaries too. There were some special guests: Bro. Hemingway, the Director of Proselyting for the Church Missionary Department (basically the head honcho below the apostles) and his partner, Bro. Donaldson. Best. Meeting. Ever. Like seriously it may have been the best meeting of my entire mission. We were corrected on a lot of the things we do, plan and teach as missionaries. We learned a ton,  too. Those guys are really on it. It makes sense, since all they do is study missionaries and work on how we can be better. But yeah, it was incredibly good. After that, I met up with the other two (I was the only one of us invited) and we had some dinner. After that we went back to the church to meet up with the missionaries and members there. We all split up to go visit some of the people who hadn't come to church in a while. It went pretty well! We didn't get too many people to open the door, but I got to know the member I was with better, which was cool. He is Bro. Os' nephew, and he had kinda been quiet, so we had a good talk when I was with him. 

Friday went pretty well, too! We had a great morning. We started putting into practice all the stuff I learned in MLC and it went really well. We planned everything out super detailed for the three main people we had, and scheduled everything so that we could see all of them. So naturally everything went haywire, and we ended up in a hurry for most of the day. We met some super cool people though! We also had a great lesson with L. She still isn't sure about getting baptized, and it's hard to not pressure her into it since we know how important it is! But she committed  to read and pray every day for a week, and we promised her that if she does so with actual intent then she will know that everything we've taught is true. So hopefully she does it! We also met this AWESOME kid named J. He's from Colombia. He has some Mormon family, and also his girlfriend he met in Colombia (and now lives in Idaho) is Mormon too. He randomly showed up to the English ward last week, and they gave him our number. So he called us and invited us over! So we biked 5 miles or so out to his house and got to know him. He's really really cool, and he likes everything we teach too! His girlfriend's already talked to him about a lot of it (including eternal marriage ;) ) so she's helping out from a distance too. Anyway, after that we took him (well, he drove us) to soccer night. Unfortunately, we got there literally as the game finished and everyone was driving off. But the other missionaries were still there, so he got to meet them. 

Saturday was demanding, physically. We spent most of the day biking, and went about 20 miles. Most of the people we tried and had planned were not home, so we ended up just knocking on some doors. We met some cool people though! After dinner we had some more success. We got to visit with N, one of our top investigators, and meet her husband. We had a good talk with them, and she said she would come to church! Woo! Also, J and his dad said they would come. Add that to L and her son, and we have 5 investigators that said they'd be there! 

Sunday was great! Everyone except N showed up to church, which was fantastic. J really liked church, and so did his dad, I think! They had to leave early for something, but it was all good. L and her kids liked church too! Her daughter is super adorable, I will try to get a picture of her. After church, we went to the Bs for dinner (someone fed us, yay!) and it was super delicious. After that we dropped off the other elders (we have a car now yay!) we went to some appointments we had set earlier. None of them were available so we decided to try some former investigators. Elder Contreras and I had a bit of an argument over which trailer this one guy lived in, and we decided to try mine first. It turns out I was wrong, (I still think he's wrong  too though) but we met this SUPER awesome guy. His name is D. We had a really awesome conversation with him. He asked all of the questions that we missionaries dream about people asking. He really wants to know if all of this that we teach is true, and he's willing to do some work to find out, too! Which we really appreciate, because that's really the key to everything, actually doing some research on your own. It's how anyone can find out for themselves if this message is true. If you haven't done it yet, give it a shot, k? 

Love ya lots! Have a fantastic week!

P.S. Do you guys remember T, the lady I taught in Jonesboro? Well, she and her daughter just got baptized this weekend!! Woo!