January 11th, 2017

This week has been pretty eventful! I got a new companion, Elder Dey, who is from North Carolina. He has been out a year and he seems like a really good companion. We also had MLC and there was a way cool change that happened throughout the whole world with our missionary schedule. It's a bit hard to explain but essentially we no longer have a strict structure to our morning routine. We can now study, exercise, and prepare for the day in what ever order we want. Also we plan in the mornings too so our evenings have nothing and we can now choose to go to bed at 9:30 or 10:30 which is so nice. It may not seem very cool to you but it's huge for us haha

Paul is gone. He moved back up North and is living with his family who sorta talked him out of baptism. He said one day he might get back into it but for now he is going to leave it. I was pretty crushed about that but I know the Lord has him on a path. We did pick up some new people. Hanifa, who we have taught twice now and then Paul(2) who is the husband of a member in our ward who was recently reactivated by the sister missionaries but Paul(2) wants the Elders to teach him! We're pretty excited. Me and Elder Dey have set good transfers goals one of them being to beat the APs in key indicators but also we really want to get into out of the box finding again like I did in Plymouth and Salisbury. So that's pretty much my life right now.

Funny sorry. We were our way back from a district meeting at the temple and I was on exchange with Elder Ribero who is an office Elder. We were about half way there when out of no where I got hit in the stomach with that all too familiar stomach pain that I get when I have mad diarrhea. I wasn't sure what to do so I decided to try and man up and see if the pain would pass. That thought quickly left my head when I got more shooting pains in my stomach so I frantically asked Elder Ribero if he could pull over at the next petrol station. The sisters were in the back just dying of laughter (Sister Manage is from Sri Lanka and Sister Cassidy is from Scotland and they're super funny) and it was making me laugh which made everything hurt more. So we pulled up to the petrol station and I got out and waddle/run to the toilets and Elder Ribero chased me. I got to the bathroom and there was an out of order sign on the male toilets with a maintenance man there. I instantly was filled with fear and looked at the girls bathroom but then Elder Ribero showed me there were disabled toilets. The best part of this story is while I was exploding in the toilets Elder Ribero was talking to the maintenance man and got his number and a return appointment haha just goes to show you can be a missionary in any situation!

Something I have really been focusing on this past week or two is giving everything to God not worrying about the outcomes. Using a prayer journal has helped a lot to communicate with Him. There were some things that I really didn't know what to do and I was trying to get Heavenly Father to tell me what to do but I wasn't getting anything and I learned that revelation comes when we are completely willing to do what God wants over what we want. It's so difficult to do but being on a mission helps so much. It's kind of like an incubator for spiritual growth. I am so grateful to be here.