Bell, Rigdin PT

The week I was both looking forward to and dreading has finally happened. I'd been asked to give a talk on how General Conference has affected my life, and I was definitely a bit nervous about speaking in front of the ward. But I probably shouldn't start with the end of the week. MONDAY was the first P-day in the new transfer, and we started it by going to the mall. The other Elders we live with got permission to go out of our zone to the mall in the zone over and brought Elder Bates and me along. Most of the time we spent there was just walking around and window shopping at all the stores. One of the other Elders did buy a new suit for pretty cheap, though. Other than that, none of us bought anything, but it was still pretty fun just walking around the mall and looking at all the stuff on sale. After that, we headed to one of the nearby chapels to have our regular zone P-day with lots of basketball for them and lots of family time for me. TUESDAY we weren't too sure what w...

I'm officially into my second transfer now, and I'm pretty excited to see how it goes. It feels like it went a lot quicker than I thought it would, which is great. I've had some pretty interesting things happen this last week, which were both sad and exciting. On MONDAY, we ended our area search with the zone leaders that morning after doing personal study and planning. Then, they went back to their area, and we stayed here so we could start p-day. Once they left, we had breakfast, took showers, and then did our grocery shopping for the week using the last of the money on our Bank of America cards before the mission switches the bank they use. Once that was all done, we headed out into town with the other missionaries in the house to have zone p-day and hang out. On the way, we finished the talk, "They Saw Our Day," which we had started the night before. It was a pretty interesting one on all the prophecies from the scriptures that have been fulfilled and how a lo...

It's been a pretty eventful week for me this time. I spent a lot of time in town this week for a couple of reasons, and while it was pretty exhausting, it was also very fulfilling and joyful. MONDAY was a pretty normal P-day, with me talking with my family, going shopping, doing laundry, meeting in town with the other missionaries for some fun, and all the other normal things we do on P-day. Closer to the end of the day, once we got back to missionary work, we met with one of our friends and had a pretty long talk with them about where we go once we die. It was pretty interesting to hear his thoughts, and I'm excited to keep having lessons with him. TUESDAY was a very special day for me for a couple of reasons. It just so happened to be my mom's birthday, so I was able to call and talk with her and see how she was doing. It really helped me to be able to talk with her and get motivated for the work again. After that, it was a pretty normal missionary schedule until around 8...

I've officially been in the field for over a month now. It's been moving a lot faster than I thought it would be. Living with so many other Elders in one place has led to some funny moments that I'll talk about. Monday started off interesting with the power going out while we were studying, which really didn't affect us much. What it did do, though, was make us have to go shopping in town because Walmart needed to get the food cold again. The drive felt longer because it was 4 elders in one truck with bags and a change of clothes for zone p-day. Once we finished shopping, we went to the chapel for zone p-day where the tall team started the punishment for losing the Facebook challenge. The punishment was that we had to cook breakfast for the winning team, and we didn't slack off with cooking. We made hashbrowns (which became hash-blacks after we cooked them) and French toast, which turned out pretty good, if I had to say. After that, I talked to my family for a while...