Bell, Rigdin PT

This week was a pretty busy one with a lot of good news! Also, just a heads-up, my list of people who are supposed to be on this email got messed up, so if you know anyone who's supposed to be here that isn't, let me know. Thanks! MONDAY was a bit interesting because, in the middle of our shopping, we got asked to go to the hospital to give a blessing. Unfortunately, a young woman had been in a bad car accident and was in a medically induced coma, and the family wanted us to come by and give her a blessing of healing. We were able to go right over and give her that blessing, as well as blessings of comfort to her parents. Afterwards, we went and had a good time at the zone P-day, with Sister Willis even showing up and playing board games for a bit. TUESDAY we finally were able to go and grab our car that had been in the shop. It's weird having two cars in one companionship, but it's also weird to technically be two areas in one companionship, so you take what you are gi...

Biggest news for this week: we got our new companion. Elder Short is from Las Vegas, Nevada, and has been serving for 9 months now. MONDAY I got to play a ton of board and card games. That's pretty typical for me to do on a p-day, but other than that, we just helped Elder Gurney get ready to leave. TUESDAY we went to a local restaurant for lunch to have a final meal with the apartment before half of us left. It was a pretty good time, and we even had a bit of a miracle because all of the parking meters downtown weren't working, so we didn't need to pay. WEDNESDAY we spent a good bit of time out finding and just trying to teach people. Other than that, it was just us getting ready for zone conference. THURSDAY we met our new companion, Elder Short. He's been out for 9 months and is from Las Vegas. We met him at zone conference and made the swap between him and Gurney. Zone conference was pretty interesting with a bunch of different trainings and "get-to-know-you...

As of Wednesday, I have officially been serving the Lord as a full-time proselytizing missionary for a year! Some parts have gone slow and others really fast, but I've still got a year to go, and I'm going to give it my all! MONDAY I spent a lot of preparation day just playing board games and card games with the missionaries in my zone. It's not the most interesting thing to write about, but all that matters is that I won. Other than that, once we got back to doing missionary work, we had some fun tracting a couple of neighborhoods. TUESDAY We got the news that we can do our weekly planning at any time of the day as long as we are done before 5. It's not the craziest change, but it will definitely give us a bit more control over our schedule. Something really cool that happened was that we were able to have a great lesson with one of our friends over the phone where they said they wanted to be baptized! The weather Tuesday was also really crazy—we got a big dust storm a...

Happy Independence Day, everyone! This week had some interesting moments and some very annoying weather, but the work will go on no matter what. MONDAY was a pretty fun day and was the first P-day since President Willis got to the mission field. We spent a lot of the day with most of the zone doing activities like playing pickleball at the public courts and then played a bunch of board games at zone P-day. To end off this day, I'll give everyone a warning to not look at their phone while driving because my companion did that and now we have to take our car to an auto shop. TUESDAY we had a bit too much fun during weekly planning. I got completely wrapped up in some plastic wrap. After we finished planning and got me out of that stuff, we went and saw the new mission office for the first time because our vehicle coordinator wanted to check the damage to our car. It was pretty cool for me because I was able to meet a lot of senior and proselytizing missionaries I hadn't met yet, ...

Another week in El Paso, and it's been marked by saying goodbye to one mission president and saying hello to a new one. MONDAY started off the same as last week with us going and playing pickleball with the other missionaries. We also went and got haircuts because my hair was getting pretty shaggy, and I needed to look good for the new mission president. TUESDAY was the start of a lot of problems for the southern part of the mission because all of our missionary apps started having a lot of bugs. It's a bit of a pain, but I guess it just means we get to see what missionaries in the past had to deal with. WEDNESDAY we went on exchanges with our district leader. It was pretty cool being able to go on exchanges in a trio because you're able to get a new look at the area. THURSDAY we had a final meeting with President and Sister Edwards. They did a big lunch for all the southern zones and gave a bunch of final goodbyes. I'm really glad that I got to serve with them, and the...