Occcccccccccccccctober

This week has seemed so long it's like I can't even think of what happened this week!

But in casual small talk, the leaves have been breathtaking! It's like all the trees are Mike-n-Ikes. Just that deep green, deep red, deep yellow or deep orange color. Y'all should be jealous cause I have the prettiest mission EVER. Seriously breathtaking. But then this big ol' nasty rainstorm happened and a lot of the leaves fell off :( Still though. It's pretty!

And humid.
I hate humidity.
And so does my hair.
Since I've started my mission I've tried to be more positive in life, but that is one thing I will consistently hate.
Humidity.
Frizzfrizzfrizzfrizzfrizz.
Dumb.

But anywayyyyy

Monday evening we had a GREAT lesson with a less active member again! I just love her! It has been AMAZING to see the progress she's made since we started to meet with her. We've seen her go from debating everything we said, and not taking any of our commitments seriously, to seeing her rediscover her testimony, feel the spirit, and actually say, "I seriously meant to read the chapter you left me!" We committed her to watch conference AND SHE BETTER HAVE CAUSE THERE WERE LIKE FIVE TALKS THAT I WAS THINKING, 'SHE NEEDS TO SEE THIS.' We're meeting with her again tonight so hopefully we'll see some continuing progress.  I can't say if she's super close to coming back to church, but I know we're making progress. She keeps saying she's making baby steps towards coming back, but I don't think she realizes the huge, bounding steps she's already made.

On a side note, I've eaten so much food this week it's disgusting. It was like national 'feed the poor, little, already-full missionary' week. Will you all still love me if I'm fat? But I really do appreciate it! And the food was good!

Tuesday was a great day to be a missionary. Sister R and I taught district meeting and it went really well! Then we had a lesson with our recent convert and the bishop came with us. It was fantastic. She even bore her testimony! We talked to her Sunday, and she said she didn't watch Saturday's General Conference and I was thinking NOOOOOOOOOO because, again, there were like five different talks where I was like SHE NEEDS TO HEAR THIS.  You'd think that prophet and those apostle guys were inspired or something.  But it's good to see her making progress!

Our investigator also had her baptismal interview on Friday and is good to go! I hope the ward supports her and that she'll be fully friendshipped. But her baptism date is set for this Saturday! We dropped by yesterday and helped her set up conference on her ipad. Hopefully she'll watch the whole thing.

We also had a good experience after conference on Saturday. One of the members fed us dinner! She brought us to her friend's house. We've visited with the friend a little in the past and have become good friends with her. The friend also invited her friend over. As we're eating dinner, the member's friend started talking about her previous studyings with another religion, and her friend was like, "Hey I belong to that religion!" and we were like, "No way. That's awesome!" And she said, "Yeah....but there's a lot of questions that they can't really answer....but their main stuff I believe!" Somehow, later, we managed to get on the topic of the member's friend's son who passed away, and how, through her various studying with other religions, she's really not sure what happened to him. We shared a scripture (Alma 40) about the resurrection, and asked if both of them would be interested in learning about the Plan of Salvation, and what we know happens after this life. They agreed! They both said they're open to learning, and although they may not fully study the gospel, I'm excited to at least tell them the message and plan Heavenly Father has for us. So hopefully that works out.

Thursday, we went tracting. We met a nice woman who was Catholic, but she gave us water and let us pet her dog, Lucky. I thought of Monique's doggy. Then after a lot of uninterested, but pretty nice, people. We knock on a door and this woman dressed in a fancy outfit answers. So I'm like, "Oh...looks like we caught you guys heading somewhere." "Yes we have a meeting on missionary work for our religion tonight." And I was like, "HEY WE'RE MORMONS!" And she goes, "Oh! See both of us go door to door." She wasn't interested. But she was nice. And had a nice blouse on.

Friday was discouraging. Things didn't go well with the lesson we taught.

Then CONFERENCE! Saturday we watched both sessions at the church, and Sunday we watched the sessions at a member's house! Saturday's sessions were AMAZING! I definitely connected better with them. And my WHOLE life...well okay not my WHOLE life....I've always been like, "Man. Elder Holland is EVERYONE'S favorite apostle/speaker. I respectfully refuse to make him my favorite apostle because he's everyone's favorite!" So I see Elder Hales get up to speak and I was like, "Ah yes that's my man. He's totally my favorite." Then Elder Holland spoke. Yeah....he's now my new favorite. Tears. Tears everywhere. AND ELDER UCHTDORF! AND ELDER CHRISTOFFERSON! AND SISTER STEPHENS! AND ELDER BEDNAR! WHY ARE THEY ALL SO GREAT? IT'S LIKE THEY'RE APOSTLES AND PROPHETS OF THE LORD OR SOMETHING! WHY CAN'T EVERYONE JUST WATCH AND ENJOY CONFERENCE AS I DO???

Anyway. I'll leave you with this story:

After conference, while at the member's house, I saw a squash. So, naturally, I picked it up and threw it at Elder F. So then he threw it at Elder J. Then he threw it at Sister R, and we got a game of  'toss the squash' going on. So then, naturally, we started using T-Rex arms and acting as dinosaurs as we did so. I mean, what else would you do with a squash? In the whole process of this, the squash got pretty destroyed. (Sorry, Mama Cox.) So, naturally, we all stepped outside so that we could watch the Elders punch it. So as they're punching it I'm like, "Well I wanna punch the squash!" So they hold it out, and I muster all my strength and threw my best punch at it!
And it didn't make a single impact on it.
Lame.
So then I'm like, "Not cool. Trying again."
So I muster my strength again, throw my best punch at it, and totally slid, head butted the squash, and for a split second I was absolutely horrified that I might accidentally fall on Elder J (who was holding the squash).
SO. EMBARRASSING.
Needless to say I'm VERY glad that didn't happen.
Shabadoodoodashabadoodooda another awkward moment.