Well this week has been crazy. This email might be a little short because I have no desire to do anything right now. Saturday night Elder Anderson woke up at about 1:00 in the morning and threw up for the rest of the night. The lucky guy got to give a talk in sacrament meeting too. Then later that night we went to the Jacksons to just relax so he could get better and we kinda switched places. Walking in I felt fine then after spending some quality time with my favorite white bowl I called some people from the ward to give me a blessing. Thankfully Elder Anderson was feeling well enough to drive us home. I spent the rest of the night until about 6:00 trying to sleep but mostly just throwing up. There are very few things in life that are more humbling than being curled up on a shower mat for 6 hours trying to keep a Gatorade inside me and failing miserably. But thankfully our shower mat is pretty comfy so I fell asleep for a few hours this morning. After getting a little bit of rest I felt a lot better and around 10:00 we made it over to the Jacksons to do laundry. I really over estimated how good I felt so I got back into the familiar position of curling up on their couch and took a nap. Now I am just thankful to be able to come and email, even if it’s only for a short while.
A few days ago President Hair (a councilor to President Clark) called us up and asked if we wanted to have a Christmas party at his house tonight. The whole zone was invited but because of the lack of miles we all have this month we didn’t think many would be able to make it. But thankfully when we got all the calls back all 24 of the missionaries in the zone are going to make it tonight. So we are pretty excited for that.
But let me back up into the week a little bit. I had a few last days with Elder Williams and those were good. We get to see each other like 3 times over the next 2 weeks so that is going to be cool. Then on Wednesday we went to transfers and now I have Elder Anderson as my companion. There are 8 elder Andersons in the mission so they all have nicknames. My companion is either Duncan Anderson cause that’s his first name or Cowboy Anderson cause he did rodeo for a while before his mission. He is a little older than me (24) and he is from Payson, Utah. Being his companion has been great so far. He was in Fairview Heights for 7 1/2 months at the beginning of his mission and now he only has 3 transfers left so he could very easily die here and spend a full year. Just like with Elder Williams it’s great because he already knows a bunch of people and that makes things a lot easier. I’m pretty sure I haven’t gone more than 5 minutes without laughing since we got put together. Even when we were hovering over the toilet we were laughing out heads off. So I am looking forward to a really fun transfer.
I’m trying to think of other things that happened this week. Well the water here is terrible. We are getting it from the bottom of the Mississippi so it all tastes like dirt. But on the bright side you come out of the shower with a nice earthy smell aka we always smell like dirt. But on a better note we had a really good experience at church yesterday. Brenda is quite the little recent convert missionary. She has started bringing her twin nephews Torey and Corey to church with her and they both bring their girlfriends. They are both 19 and seem pretty interested. Last night we got a call from Brenda and she was just exploding with joy because Corey had told her after church that he felt something different there and that he wanted to join. We were thrilled to get that call. We have a lot of work to do with him and he has a lot of life changes to make but if he really wants to be happy then he will be able to do it. Corey and Torey have a few kids and they have an amazing opportunity to raise them in a good environment so we are really excited to be able to help them with that.
Things are going really well here and as Christmas comes closer we are getting excited for that too. We have a Christmas party coming up on Thursday with a lot of the mission and then we are looking forward to a fun Christmas day too. I’m thankful for all the experiences that I get to have as a missionary and all the new things I get to learn both through the great times and the tough ones. Thank you for all of your prayers and support and I’ll talk to you all again soon.
-Elder Banks
Oh man I almost forgot! Matt’s birthday is today. One of four birthdays in the world that I know. He is such an old fart now and I am so excited to get home from my mission and destroy him in a game of basketball for once in my life. Happy Birthday man!
Pictures:
Halloween
A wet Thanksgiving football game
Sporting a Christmas vest
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