Man your email was full of surprises this week! I can’t believe Callie is getting married. That is so weird haha. But that’s super cool for her. I did get Aunt Jeanette’s package and Kayla’s mom sent me one too this week. It was awesome to get both of them. The Sanders kids live right by me haha. None of them are in our stake but they are all within probably 30 minutes of me. I can’t believe Ashlyn is going on a mission! That was a cool update. And ya we still live in the same place. We have no idea when we are moving but he is cool with us staying so it’s all working out.
This week was one of those weeks where you look back and you can’t help but smile because it was so awesome. The first couple days were pretty normal. Monday we had P-day and just played basketball the whole time then went to Ted Drews to get ice cream even though it’s been freezing this week. Then Tuesday we just went around and had a normal day of work with nothing too special happening.
Wednesday is when things really got shaken up. We went to transfers and Elder Bullock headed out and Elder Anderson came in. Also we got our visa waiter who is going to Brazil and his name is Elder Redmond. We got home on Wednesday way earlier than I thought we were going to so we had a lot of free time so we just went out and tracted for 4 hours. It was amazing because Elder Anderson is a pro. He can talk to anyone about anything and they will just eat it up. Everyone wants to just talk to him it’s fantastic. We got 3 new investigators that day. Then later that night we headed up to the Fox Theater to give away copies of the Book of Mormon again. We had 5 boxes to give out and a ton of cards to give away after that. We were pretty excited and then the Assistants called and told us that they were going to come and bring all of the missionaries who were going home the next day to help us. We got way excited then and there were about 15 missionaries there. My new companion Elder Anderson is really good at singing and playing the guitar, so him and a couple other missionaries stood right outside the doors and sang hymns as people walked out. My trainer Elder Jensen was one of the missionaries going home the next day so it was awesome to get to spend one last night with him doing missionary work. It was an amazing experience and way better than the first time. It was just so amazing to get to see all the missionaries on their last night as a missionary getting to do this amazing thing. They were all so happy I can’t even explain what it was like. Some of them were almost in tears because they couldn’t have asked for a cooler experience on their last night. It was tough to see Elder Jensen go home but I am so thankful that I got to serve with him and I owe so much of what I have learned out here to him.
We got home Wednesday night at around midnight and I was dead tired, but I couldn’t fall asleep because I was so happy. The pure joy that I felt that night was unlike anything I have ever felt before in my life. The love and closeness I felt for my Savior and for my friends is something that I won’t ever forget.
The rest of the week has been super normal. We just worked as hard as we can. The thing that hasn’t been normal is that we have been getting amazing results out of it! Elder Anderson is a wizard. He can turn any normal bad door conversation into the greatest thing ever. People just want to talk to us all the time. The last few weeks we were teaching like 4 lessons a week about and we were lucky to find 2 new investigators. In just a few short days we taught about 10 lessons and had 6 new. It has been so fun.
The experience of Elder Anderson mixed with the greenie fire of Elder Redmond has been so cool to be a part of. Just a little background on my new companions. Elder Anderson is from St George. He was a DJ before his mission and he is 20 years old. He is way into music and has all these cool synthesizers and stuff that are super fun to play around with. While he was in college he was a DJ and he is majoring in communications. It is so much fun to be around him. We are laughing so much and it’s just been great.
Elder Redmond is from Eagle Idaho just outside of Boise. He likes music a lot too. He is more into band and choir and that kind of music but it’s cool to be around 2 people who are so musically talented. Elder Redmond is super excited to get to Brazil. He is 19 and took a semester at BYU Idaho. He wants to be a chemical engineer.
Sunday was stake conference and it was really cool. It wasn’t like any stake conference I had ever been to before. We started and the stake president stood up and did all the normal before meeting things and had a song and prayer. Then we all sat down and watched a broadcast of some seventy’s and a member of the general relief society presidency speak. Then Elder Oaks gave a talk. It was broadcast to 9 states in the Midwest and it was a super cool experience.
Right after stake conference we got to give a couple baptismal interviews so that was really awesome like always. Sunday night was great and we got to go to the Fox Theater for the final night. We had almost the whole zone there and it was just awesome. We all met 2 hours before and started filling out cards with phone numbers and things. The assistants had gone around and taken all of the extra BOMs that we had in the entire mission so we had 14 boxes. We spent a while writing in 560 copies of the Book of Mormon and filling out countless cards. We had people singing and playing the guitar again and it was just awesome. Total in the few times we got to give things away we gave 1160 copies of the Book of Mormon away and hundreds of Mormon.org cards as well. People have already started calling and texting wanting the missionaries to come over so we have seen so many blessings from it already. Last night it was so cool because everyone just loved us being there. The cops were supporting us and always had our back because they just thought it was the best thing ever that we would come out there. It was awesome. I am so excited for this transfer and I know it’s going to be a good one. I love all of you and will talk to you again soon.
Elder Banks
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