1 Month In

May 4, 2015

Hello Family,

I'm officially 1 month in. Does it feel like a month to you? Does it feel shorter/longer. To me I feel like it's been an eternity but I also feel like I was dropped off 2 days ago. I remember reading an article Mom sent me about how missionaries receive a life time of experience in the two years they serve a mission. I can easily tell you that's very true. I feel like I've done more than any of my years in high school. As far as names on the blog go ahead and change them to generic names. The pres. hasn't specified anything about blog use.

This week was pretty interesting. The last half was pretty hard. 

4-27-15 Monday

Today was a great relief. I really enjoyed emailing my friends and family. Later in the day a man drove by us in a truck. He then stopped and asked us if we were missionaries. We answered "yes" and he asked us to stop by his house at that instant. We followed him to his house but his mom, I'm assuming, said now wasn't a good time. We've tried going back a few times but we haven't been able to get in yet. Later that night we taught the "K" family again. They're really warming up to us. We taught them more about the B.O.M, read the first chapter with them and watched the 20 min. Restoration video. They even agreed to baptism. I'm 3 weeks in and have 7 people committed to baptism. 

4-28-15 Tuesday

I got my blue suit really dirty. We did 2 hours of unexpected service for one of our investigators. We moved a lot of heavy things out of their house. That's always my favorite thing to do. Every few days we find people who just flat out run from us. We walked up to this house and the people in the yard picked up their children and ran into their house as if we had the zombie disease. I about died laughing. We met a guy who mistook us for Jehovah's Witness, that happens a lot, and we clarified the difference. He seemed interested but didn't give us a number. 

4-29-15 Wednesday

Today was my first Zone meeting and Elder Lynch's last. I talked with Elder Sharp again. He happens to be in my district. I also made an unexpected discovery. Ezra Caldwell / Elder Caldwell is serving in the same mission. He came out 1 transfer before me. It was nice seeing someone from Elementary, Jr. High and High School out here. I learned a lot of good things at the conference. How to be better, how to approach better, what priesthood keys are exactly and some very useful info on iPads. We'll be granted an iPad, free of charge and we'll be given an opportunity to use our own personal Facebook accounts to find people in our area. We'll won't be using a new church Facebook. We'll be given time to clean our personal one out. I don't know if that means we'll be allowed to message home more often but you'll be seeing my Facebook become a lot more active than it ever has been in a few weeks. 

4-30-15 Thursday

There isn't a whole lot to say about today. We taught two families. One is a part member family the other is an inactive family. All of our other appointments fell through.

5-1-15 Friday (1 Month)

We had 5 set appointments for today and ALL of them fell through. We spent like 8 hours tracting. We talked to a lot of people in those 8 hours. Almost all of them said the same things. "I'm comfortable where I'm at" "I already go to church" "I already believe in Jesus" "I've already been saved" etc. etc. etc. In those 8 hours we only met 1 man who seemed interested. We talked to him and he accepted a return appointment. He even said he and his family have been looking for a church lately. He's a super friendly guy. We also met a member from Salem UT who gave us some good tracting tips. We met another Satanist today. He asked us if we had our "magic underwear on that protected us from evil." Elder Lynch responded with "Yeah, along with my 40 wives." 

5-2-15 Saturday

Over the past month Elder Lynch has been talking about going back to Lexington KY, his previous area, to view someone's baptism and confirmation. The Pres. allows you to return to previous areas with his permission. Today was the day we were supposed to drive 2.5 hours to Lexington but the person being baptized and confirmed decided she wasn't ready and called the whole thing off 15 minutes before we were going to leave. We spent the rest of the day tracting again. We used the tips we got from the member the previous day and they worked out pretty well. We found 1 potential and had a nice discussion with a German lady. 

5-3-15 Sunday

Today was fast and testimony meeting in church. It was really good. I'm surprised by how many people came up. There are far fewer people in our branch than my home ward but more people came up in the branch than the ward. Later in the day we had an appointment with a man in a trailer park. He wasn't there (of course) so we both felt like we needed to go down the street to another road. We tried some other trailers in the park but no one would listen. After the trailer park we met up with the sister missionaries to eat at a members home. The members were really nice. 

I'm not sure if the last 4 days just happened to be difficult days or if I'm doing something wrong. Again this isn't everything that happened. Just about 2/3rds-3/4ths of what happened. 

I'm happy the spiral cymbal came. How does it sound just by itself?  Please keep sending me packages. I am getting fed but I really love how you send me stuff in the mail. It's an immense comfort to me.

Thank you so much for being there for me!

-Benjamin Bunny

Because my comp is the Senior Companion and District Leader, he's always on the phone.
We're on our way to give a blessing to a patient in the hospital.

Lizard for Little Miss

Nice trees - twisty arm