Monday, April 15, 2013

           Well this week has been crazy. This was probably the fastest week of my mission. Tuesday we went to pick up all the new missionaries and that was a blast. It was so tiring but it was really fun. Me and Elder Facer drove the mission van and drove around 10 sister missionaries. It was so funny to hear what they all thought their missions were going to be like. They were all so excited though and it really opened up my eyes to hear about a lot of them. As we were deciding who all of their trainers were going to be at midnight that night we got to hear all about some of their lives to decide what would be best for them. A couple of them have no other members in their family and a few of them even have anti Mormon parents. It made me really thankful for the position that I have been put in.

             Wednesday wasn’t quite as fun as Tuesday because we had to send all of the departing missionaries home. On their last day in the mission they get permission to stay up as long as they want. So of course because my couch was right next to the ping pong table I was up for a while. We went to bed at almost 1 then woke up at 5 to drive them all to the airport. It was sad to say goodbye to so many of my good friends but I am happy to see them all moving on and being so happy with the next step in their lives. That night we were having a testimony meeting in the mission home and the weather was going crazy. There was a tornado in Hazelwood which is pretty close to us. It touched down and destroyed some stuff but didn’t really have any negative effects on missionaries. We went up to see the Hazelwood missionaries for another reason later that day and there was lots of broken stuff. Almost all of the street signs were knocked over or broken in half but we are all fine.

            The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. We have lots of dumb things to deal with right now but hopefully they will be over soon. It’s been really eye opening to see what goes on in the office. There are a lot of missionaries with some serious problems. Some of them are really negative about it. Probably my favorite thing in the world right now is missionaries who are really struggling but you would never guess it. There are so many people in this mission who just know that they are out here for reasons much bigger than themselves. It’s really cool to meet people who are like that.

            These next few weeks we have coming up are going to be crazy busy but it’s going to be really fun. We are going around to every missionary in the mission with President Clark to do interviews. I am really excited about that because I only know like half of the missionaries in the mission so getting to meet them is going to be really fun. We are going on a ton of exchanges. I am probably never actually going to get to sleep. We are going to end up sleeping in our own beds pretty much never. Overall things are just crazy busy and way more up and down than normal but I am loving it. We live in an apartment with the office elders too and that’s a ton of fun. Our room is really tiny so we just pushed all the beds together so we pretty much all share one giant bed. I am excited for this coming week and hopefully I can keep my eyes open for the rest of the day. I love all of you and hope you’re all doing well. I’ll talk to you again soon.

-Elder Banks

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