Blacker, Dekan

    *Exhales* Life is interesting, it'll take you on a rollercoaster ride.        Last Monday was fantastic. We got In-N-Out for lunch, which is always a great start. Then at 6pm we headed out to do missionary work, except we had no where to go. So we ended up knocking on a door of a 7 year old who wants to get baptized, but his family is inactive. We ended up teaching him a quick lesson. Then I felt prompted to go see another inactive member, who wasn't home, but we saw their neighbor pull into the driveway and we went and talked to him. We ended up spending the next 2 hours on the corner of this street. First, we talked to a guy who said he doesn't believe in Jesus Christ but would like to know more about him. Then we talked to another guy, he's really cool and we had a great conversation with him; he wasn't interested in us coming back, but he accepted a Book of Mormon. Then we met a mom and her 2 kids. They're nondenominational, but let us share a ...

     I've started figuring things out. The area is becoming more familiar, I'm getting to know my companion better, I'm going back to where I'm cruising along.        We had Zone Conference on Tuesday which was really cool, I learned a lot of neat stuff about how I can be a better missionary. One thing that happened there is President Johnson got on everybody's case for not teaching 10 lessons a day. He basically said that this goal didn't come from him and the only reason we aren't teaching 10 each day is a lack of faith and not being bought in. When he said this I realized that I was indeed not bought in and that lit a fire for me to once again buy in. The problem was that after Zone Conference it was now 7:30 and we had 0 lessons for the day. Then with travel and whatnot we didn't leave the apartment until 8pm, but we're always told to seek and expect miracles and we were also promised that if we talked to everybody, as in everybody everybody, we ...

     It was my first week in my new area with my new companion and overall it wasn't a bad week, but there's a lot that's new. My first day in Clinton it felt like my first day in the mission again. I was very uncomfortable because I had no idea where I was, everything looked unfamiliar, I didn't know anybody in the area or even my companion and something that I've learned about myself is that when I'm uncomfortable I don't talk. So the first couple of days, Elder Raine ended up doing most of the talking.        I like Elder Raine, he's not toxic with his obedience. I really don't have anything bad to say about him, I just don't know him yet and it's kinda difficult going from being with one of your best friends to somebody you don't know yet. That's all it is really, I just don't know anybody in my new companionship, new district, and even really in my new zone. I'm just lonely, I miss the 4 man. I actually got to see my form...

       This was also not a great week for me. I got sick on Monday and so I didn't end up leaving the house until Sunday. I feel better now, but it was rough especially because the house was so incredibly hot and musty. Our AC doesn't work and the swamp cooler stopped working as well, so I was stuck inside while the temperature slowly rose to over 90 degrees everyday until like 8pm.         While we were stuck inside, we did share scriptures over the phone and that can do more than you realize. One lady started crying and said our phone call and the scripture was an answer to prayer. The Lord doesn't waste effort.           Some other missionaries met with Lucas this week. Apparently he's started his own religion now. We invited him to pray and this is the direction he feels he's been given. He has a Wikipedia article about it apparently it's really similar to our church.          This was the...