Busy, busy, busy!

November 16th

Hello! 

How is everyone? I hope you are doing well. Can you believe it is almost Thanksgiving? Things have been busy here.  A lot of our week was doing service for a member in our ward who was putting on a play. He was doing a musical version of the story of the People of Ammon (Anti-Nephi-Lehies) in the Book of Mormon. He will be filming it for a series he is doing called Honor Park, which is dedicated to producing good media teaching good values to boys. We helped with the set. Anyways, let me tell you more about our week :) 

On Monday night, we had FHE with the McKees, who fed us dinner. They are such a cute couple. We have dinner with them this week, too. :) FHE was about the new changes in the Handbook concerning children of gay couples. I was glad we had that FHE, because Sister Hall and I knew very little about it! We watched an interview with D Todd Christofferson that was on lds.org and I think I understand it a little bit better now. This is definitely one of those times where not everything makes sense, but we need to just have faith in our leaders. After that, we went to see Betty and read scriptures with her and a friend (who is a member). Betty's friend had a lot of difficult questions, and I am sure glad I downloaded the Institute manuals onto my iPad, because the answers were in there! I have been using it a lot in my studies, too. :) 

On Tuesday, we spent most of our day finding people. (No District Meeting because we had Zone Training Meeting later that week). We went contacting and tried talking to people, and then we tried to find members who haven't been coming to church. Not much came out of it. It was a little frustrating, but that happens. 

On Wednesday, we went and saw Wilma. We taught her about tithing. She is not retaining what we are teaching her and, after talking to her son, we may not be teaching her anymore. We will see. :( Later that day, we also visited with a couple in the ward and taught them about member missionary work. We are trying to meet with lots of members, get to know them, and invite them to pray about who they can share the gospel with. We then went and did service for the "People of Ammon" play. We were painting. All in all, it was a good day. 

On Thursday, we had Zone Training Meeting. It was really good (but really long). We talked about ways to make our areas "on fire". We talked about two talks called "The Consecrated Missionary" (by Bishop Caussé) and "Becoming A Preach My Gospel Missionary" (by Elder Bednar). We also played a fun activity where there were characteristics of a consecrated written on pieces of paper inside of balloons and we had to throw a dart at the balloons to pop them and then act out whatever was written on the paper. Never give darts to Elders. Trust me. After ZTM, we had lunch and then went to work on the People of Ammon set. We were stucco-ing houses and covering poles with bamboo. It was crazy.  We then went home and changed and cleaned ourselves up for our dinner appointment. After dinner, we went and saw Jerri. She is doing great! After that, we came home. 

On Friday, one of our appointments cancelled, so we went back to the People of Ammon set and helped paint and stucco and put bamboo on poles. We then left and helped the Relief Society set up for their annual craft night at the church. After that, we had a quick lunch and went back to the People of Ammon set. There was so much to do and the play was on Saturday, so the whole zone was there trying to help get it all done! We then went back home, changed out of our paint-covered clothes, and went to the craft night (where we had dinner). We then went home. It was a busy service-filled day!

On Saturday, we went back to the People of Ammon set to help get everything ready for the show that afternoon. We then went and got lunch before coming back to see the show. It was really good! Afterwards, we got a zone picture in front of one of the buildings we did and walked around the set like "I did that and that and that..." :) Afterwards, we started our weekly planning before our dinner. After dinner, we came back and worked on planning. 

On Sunday, we had church. It was the Primary Program. It was so cute! :D One little girl was dancing up there while they were singing a little boy was shouting the lyrics more than he was singing them (haha). The rest of church was great too. Next week, Sister Hall and I are going to be speaking in Sacrament Meeting and helping in Primary! We will see how that goes... After Church, we had a meeting with our ward mission leader and then went home for lunch and to finish planning. After planning, we met with Bonnie and shared a quick message with her before going to dinner. We had a great time. 

That is about all for here. We need to go run our errands and then we will probably go to another Zone Activity. Have a wonderful week!!!!! :D