Such a Fun, Crazy Week

Road-Trippin

Sunset over the Missouri

Ever since Monday after emails, the week's been jam-packed with miracles and fun.  Its been an incredibly joyful week.  

We've been so busy with a ton of meetings and Exchanges this week that it took a ton of time out of our area.  After a great exchange with the Norfolk English Elders (one of which, Elder Jones, is from Hurricane and his dad taught ceramics at PV for a while), we headed back to Sioux City to get everything ready for Interviews with President Gardner the next day.  

My Interview with President was really good.  We talked about the fact that you only serve a mission once.  I asked him what I could do in these past few months to finish stronger than ever and the only advice he gave me was "put everything off that you can until you get home and work, work, work."  I plan to do just that!    He also asked me how I'd changed over the past 22 months.  That's a huge question.  I listed off a couple of the things that I've noticed are different and he pointed out to me that all of those changes are the Lord preparing me for the future.  He said, "Elder,  the most important people you'll ever teach are not the ones you're teaching right now.  They're your wife and children.  The Lord's preparing you and changing you so that you'll be an incredibly prepared husband and father to help bring them back to the presence of God."  

Weekly Planning

Preparation for this week's Spanish Conference

That awkward moment when the guy you have an 

appointment with is asleep in his hammock

 when you show up...

On top of a great interview and a great exchange, we also had a great Missionary Leadership Council where a lot of the rules were discussed and we also received some great training on how to be short and simple in our lessons.  The AP's gave a really good training on how we can use the pamphlet to teach the entire Restoration Message in under 8 minutes, and then invited us to try it out over these next few weeks before Zone Conference. 

We've seen tons of success with it already.  When we go tracting now, we use the pamphlet to teach powerfully and simply this great message of God's love and invite them to learn more.  Its incredible how when people tell you they're "busy" and then you tell them the visit will only take about 10 minutes, all of a sudden they seem to have time and they're more willing to talk to you, especially Hispanics!  We ended up finding 5 new investigators using this tactic this week! 

Branch Party

On top of all those great things, we also had a great Branch Party, part of which was a contest of Horchata with the two judges Don Juan Carlos and Senor Cisne (Me and Elder Swan).  That on top of a huge game of Futbol and some really good food and a ton of Less-Actives and investigators showing up and getting fellowshipped makes for one great night!  

I hope you also had a good week!  I love you!

Love,

Elder Paddock

Last Night's crazy storm