Bell, Rigdin PT

This was my first full week down south and it sure has been an interesting one. There have been days in the hundreds and days in the seventies, a lot of Spanish speakers who we've had to try and share the gospel with, and even a missionary going home so I'm now in a trio. MONDAY: Pickleball came back! A lot of the missionaries and even the senior missionaries go play pickleball at the public courts nearby, so Elder Gurney and I went and played for a good bit. I'm not the best at it, but it's still really fun. Then later that day, we had a really good dinner with the senior missionaries who are assigned to the Chamizal stake. TUESDAY: We got the news that Elder Gurney and I will officially be in a trio due to one of the other elders we ward share with going home early for medical reasons. Thankfully, I know his companion from a lot of my other zones I've been in, and we get along pretty well. WEDNESDAY: Elder Gurney woke up with some pretty bad food poisoning, so I w...

Getting ready for the mission split and going down south has made this week really hectic. I also added a bunch of people to my email list this last week, so for a quick recap: I have been reassigned to the Texas, El Paso mission and have been sent down to El Paso midway through the transfer. When the mission splits, I'll be staying down here. MONDAY: Elder Shawcroft and I just stayed in Taos so that I could finish packing my bags and say goodbye to a bunch of the members up there. We even ended up playing a couple of games of chess with one of the members we visited near the end of P-day. TUESDAY: The southern part of our mission had their zone conference with Elder Alonso of the Area Seventy, and all the missionaries in the north were allowed to join over Zoom for the first half. It had a really strong focus on the principles of discipleship as a missionary and what we can do to improve as missionaries. After that, we went out tracting for a bit and then headed home to get all my...

This week I got some pretty exciting and unexpected news! But, I'll leave it for a bit later in the email so everyone has to read it all. MONDAY we had some fun at zone P-day by playing pickleball without a net. We just set up a bunch of chairs in the middle of the court so we could play, and that made it so much funnier because the ball would bounce at really weird angles when it hit a chair. Unfortunately, when we were on our way home, there was a car fire in the canyon that led to Taos, so we were pretty late getting home. TUESDAY we were out tracting and ended up having a random stray dog go from house to house with us while we were tracting for almost an hour. That happens more often than you'd think, though. We also got assigned to give talks in a couple of weeks. WEDNESDAY we had a lesson over Zoom with one of our most progressing people where we focused on the baptismal interview questions. It went really well, and they are making really great progress towards being bap...

This week we had a good mix of very friendly people and very unfriendly people. It's been a pretty good example of how there are good and bad examples of any faith or group that you can meet. MONDAY we had our first district p-day of the transfer. The areas that are in the district got changed up a bit, so it was interesting getting to know some of the new missionaries a bit better. TUESDAY we ran into one of those types who just wanted to talk at us about politics. He had some very interesting beliefs and wasted our whole hour of tracting by just talking at us. WEDNESDAY we had another interesting person, with this one saying that they would let us share a message with them if we prayed the rosary with them. It was interesting just sitting there and listening to them give this really repetitive prayer. We then shared a message about the power of prayer and how it is a very personal way to seek guidance from our Heavenly Father. THURSDAY nothing too interesting happened, but we had...