Yes, I know, it has been way too long! I have been really lazy and haven't written an update in forever!
Monday was pretty simple. For the past few weeks, we have been organizing soccer in the mornings for P day. This helped me keep my sanity. I have missed soccer so much. After running errands all day we went to meet some of our less active members. They are great... and promised to come to church! ( which they did) :) and then we met with an investigator. We agreed that he needs to push himself a little bit harder, and drop some more things so that he can be ready for baptism. Then at the end of the night we had a big family home evening with the senior couple, Brother and Sister Bailey because sadly they had a family emergency and went back to America. Everyone in the branch was really sad. We had a spiritual thought and then we played a game. It was really cool. One of the mothers asked for a blessing before we started the FHE. She wanted Brother Bailey to give her one before he left. I was asked to translate. I had never done that before and it was really neat. I felt the spirit so strong during the blessing. At first, I was thinking of what needed to be said...but that didn't go very well. Then I began listening to the spirit and the words started to flow out. I knew that member was feeling the spirit because of the tears in her eyes as she thanked us for our service. I am so grateful for those opportunities.
Tuesday we had district meeting. It was really great. I truly felt prepared this time and the lesson went just as planned! I was pleased how it went, and everyone participated. Then we went to my old area and helped the Branch President there with some paper work that he didn't understand. That was neat to see how the church records work.
Wednesday we met with an "eternal investigator" who is really starting to show some progress! It is really great to see his desire to learn spark up again. After that, we had a really awesome lesson with our Branch President and his wife about how we can better serve others. Then we shared about the temple and what we can do to help others in the branch prepare to go. They agreed to start visiting the members and help them to prepare. Then we had English class! This is week two of the English class here in Branch 10... and we already have 9 people coming. It is growing really quickly and hopefully it will continue to get bigger.
Thursday was weekly planning and this time we did the whole thing in English, because my companion really wants to learn. Very weird... we even prayed in English. We had planned to have an exchange with the zone leaders right afterwards, so Elder Tran came into my area with me. We ended up getting stood up on all of our lessons we had planned, so we just contacted a bunch... which was a little embarrassing because whenever the zone leaders come, you always want to show them how much work you are doing. Oh well, it was still fun.
Friday was hard because Elder Tran had gotten food poisoning
on Thursday night. Talk about a stellar exchange right?
Yeah he was borderline dead and he like woke me up at about four in the morning saying, "Elder Morris, I think I'm dying". Apparently was half asleep still because my reply was, "cool dude..." and then I fell back asleep.
I felt bad about that. So we stayed in for a while. He slept and I planned and cleaned. Studying by yourself is like weird now.
We switched back and my real companion and I went to a FHE that we had planned with some returning less actives. They are the cutest little family and I had prepared a movie that I wanted them to watch. We even got our branch president to come along. But he fates did not smile upon us that day, because the DVD player wouldn't read the disc... so we ended up just sharing what they would have seen in the movie. It was still good, but not the same. :(
Saturday, we went to play soccer in the morning with three investigators and all their Vietnamese friends. ;) I was given permission to play soccer as a means of finding... which is awesome! We had a good time! Some guys sitting around at the soccer place asked me where I learned how to play and they were actually kinda interested in the gospel too which was a real score.
