Week 5

Hey family and friends!

This week has been a lot of fun and involved quite a bit of travel!

On the morning of last Saturday, the mission was filled with anticipation during the single hour we had to work in our zones. Around 11 o'clock my companion and I left the discovery center, grabbed a quick lunch, and walked over to the Salt Lake Stake Center. When we got there the sidewalk was filled with missionaries. Quite literally, every young elder in the entire mission was there waiting for the large gray buses to pull up to the curve. When they finally arrived we took a moment to get organized, and then all 93 of us shuffled on to the buses and we were on are way down to Manti! After the two and a half hour drive, we pulled up to the Manti temple. We went through a session and headed down to the National Guard base for their annual barbecue turkey dinner. They did a really good job. I actually overheard a missionary who mistakenly thought the turkey was pork. The Mormon Miracle Pageant was filled with fun. Before it started we actually were asked to hand out some flyers for the pageant by the info booths. The show was amazing! The production value was really good, and the voices were well placed for their characters. By the time the pageant finished it was about midnight. We all piled back into the buses. Some of us looking drowsy, others a bit more awake. By the time we had all gotten home it was about 1:30 in the morning, and by the time we were in bed it was about 2:00. The mission president gave us permission to sleep in, and catch up on our rest. However, there was no rest for my companion and I.

A bit earlier on the Sunday morning we had to go grab a van and go with four other Elders to Brookdale assisted living. It was a pretty standard visit, passing out the sacrament and all. By the time we got back it was a little past noon. We went home grabbed a quick lunch and headed over to help pass the sacrament in our own branch, immediately before my companion also had to teach Sunday School. By the time church was over we had dinner appointments with a single sister, which ended up turning into a feast provided by 4 senior missionaries together! It was really good, filled with chicken, baked beans, and chips. However, by the time we got back, it being 7:30 at night we just crashed. With the night before, and the full day following it, it all caught up to us and we slept through the night until we had to get up at six on Monday.

Last night we had a Joseph and Hyrum Martyrdom devotional in the Assembly Hall. At the beginning President Fenn, who was both conducting and presiding, said I am going to cover more information in this devotional on the martyrdom than you will probably ever hear at once in your lives, so buckle up! Cover he did. He always has encouraged us to take notes at every meeting, so obviously we all had our notebooks out at the beginning. About five minutes in, we all realized that there was so much info coming in at such a high speed, that there was no way we would be able to take any type of notes with accuracy, and so all the notebooks in the entire hall were put away right about then. It was truly amazing, and very spiritual. There was so much that I was not aware we knew about the martyrdom, and it was really enlightening.

Today is transfers. We only had one moving of residence announcement for a person in our district, which was neither my companion or I. So we don't have to pack. This is going to be a big one though. There is going to be a new AP assigned, 13 new trainers, new districts, and new zones announced. So we're all pretty excited about that.

That's pretty much it for this week!

-Elder Hall