Monday, February 21, 2011

A Great Week in Dillon

Well Hello Everyone,

So I had a whole list of things to write today and then I forgot my planner so we'll see how good I can do. We were blessed this week to have quite a few set appointments. Missionary work is so much easier when you set appointments in your day. We were able to teach a new investigator Tuesday afternoon. It’s a member’s girlfriend. She is a senior in high school and has had quite a few friends who are LDS who have wanted her to read the Book of Mormon. She said she's read up through Mosiah and wants to be baptized but her grandma would never let her. She wants to take the lessons though so that when the time comes she'll be ready. This could be really good for her and for her boyfriend who is less active. We then had dinner with the Ws. He's one of the ones who's told me that we can come and go fishing with him someday. He's 80 sum years old but runs around like a 30 year old and is always going fishing. We then had an appointment cancel on us, which is probably the best thing that happened to us all week.

There was a family that Elder Askey and I had stopped in and briefly seen a few times but never got to teach. They were getting ready to have a baby and found out that there were some complications with her heart and they'd need to go to PCH in SLC for her birth. Last we talked with them they were gettting ready around Christmas to head down there. We recently had heard from our ward mission leader that they had lost the baby. For some reason the 2 or 3 times we had tried them after finding that news they weren't home. So we were pretty excited and nervous when we called them after our appointment cancelled and they said we could come over that night. Like I said we were nervous because it’s a hard thing to go into a home where you know they've just lost a baby and tell them everything is going to be all right. We went in there with faith that it'd all work out. As we got in there you could tell the mood was different. Instead of just being casual they had us come in and sit down and they rushed their twin boys to a back room to watch a movie. We had a really good conversation with them about what all had happened in SLC. It was interesting to read Aunt Carols blog about the baby having Trisomy 18 because that's what the A's baby ended up having that’s why there were heart complications. Theirs lived a little longer though I think. They were able to be with her for a little over a week. They said it was really rough but that they met some great people in SLC who really helped them. A few of them were LDS. One man whose son was also in the NICU came up to Jeremy and said that he was really nervous to do this but felt like he really needed to. He then gave Jeremy a Boof of Mormon. Later that same man wrote them an email and told them how much he appreciated how much faith the A's had and that the Book of Mormon would help them in their lives. We were able to talk to them a little bit about the Plan of Salvation. They said they are very open to listening and have a lot of questions. It’s amazing to see the difference in them from the first few times. They invited us over for dinner on Saturday and we were able to eat and then watch Together Forever. It really touched them and we had a really good emotional lesson about temples and our Heavenly Father and His plan for us. They read that letter from the man in SLC and it was really touching. He just nailed everything on the head. It made it easy to testify about different things. Elder Hineman also told a powerful story about losing his best friend when he was 12. It really capped the lesson off well. They said that their daughter had died on a Sunday so that was her day and they had gone to two other churches the previous week and that they wanted to come to our church. So Sunday they were all at church. I don't think I've ever prayed so much for a family to just feel the spirit and feel comfortable at church. I've done it before but with this family I think Elder Hineman and I both just want it sooo bad for them. We Know it could change their lives. We feel they are so golden and yet we are afraid to say that for fear that Satan will rear his Ugly Head! I think they really did enjoy church though. We are meeting with them tomorrow and it will be good to hear what they have to say about it all.

Some other things that happened this week were going to teach D and S. We taught them at his mom's this week and he wanted to show us his drums. They were out in this shed that had a basement dug out. It was nasty down there. All sorts of rat poop. As he was banging away and we were standing on the stairs we see this HUGE RAT! RATZILLA!!! Oh man I've never seen something so big! It ran across one shelf and jumped clear across to another. We booked it out of there. Another funny thing was the Ws were gone this weekend. We decided to make a fire in their stove in the garage that heats the boiler. Well we forgot you have to open up that chimney thing and we pretty much smoked up the whole garage and our apartment before we realized what we'd done wrong. I guess that’s what you get when two AZ boys try to run a stove.

I hope everyone got a chance to read my blog this week (davisdailybread.blogspot.com). We learned at zone conference some new ways to promote our stuff more and how to check the stats on our blog. I learned I've had at least one page view from the countries of Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, and two from Australia. The rest are from the U.S. It’s pretty cool to think that someone in another country might be reading your stuff.

Speaking of zone conference it was a lot of fun and we learned a lot. It was as always good to see a lot of different missionaries. Elder Wahl said Havre is going great! K's kids are getting baptized this Saturday! So that was cool to hear. The toughest part was knowing this was the last time on the mission I'd see Elder Heywood. You are going to have to go to his homecoming and I told him you'd have him out for pizza. Sound good. Well I better get going. Whitehall Elders are here for Pday. It’s good to have other missionaries around.

I hope everyone has a great week and enjoyed the 3-day weekend. I love you all and I hope to hear from you soon. Also congrats to all those who had their babies this week. Exciting stuff!

-Elder Davis

GO COUGS!!! SDSU's gonna get Jimmered!