Elder Daniel Eliason is back home! :)

Week 95

This is now my 105th week in the mission. I have 1 day left. My last day of proselyting was yesterday. We had two totally awesome lessons.

1st lesson was a 10 o'clock in the morning before church. It was a standard first lesson, but it was perfect. Point for point. Inspired questions. How to Begin Teaching using the last bullet point about baptism. All went perfectly well. 

That was a first for me on my mission when that happened exactly in that way.

Then the last lesson on the day was a first as well. 

This Member family invited 1 family to come and listen to us. This family just had an aunt that died. The Grandmother showed up with the rest of her kids and all the grand-kids too. It was like a family reunion (except one of the sisters was missing because she died in a car crash two weeks ago). There were some 25 people there. We taught all of them the Restoration. It went well. It is hard to teach so many people at a time but we did it. That was the first time I have ever taught such a large group on my mission. All this happened on my last day of proselyting, Totally awesome. Also on Saturday, the day before we got to do a couple hours of service.

On Friday, we had double appointments,  we had to do a split with some of the members to be able to go to both appointments (also a first for me on my mission). When we were waiting for the members to show up on the corner of this street and the other street we were parked next to an old man working on putting the dirt around the new foundation of his fabricated house. He was Hispanic but we had two appointments to get to. So neither of us really noticed. Well, we split with the two

members (which was a first on my mission as well) and all the appointments fell through, everyone else we both went to visit were not able to talk with us at that moment. We ended the split an hour later and we went to our next appointment, which fell through as well. We then realized the missed opportunity we had to do service with that one really old Hispanic guy so we went and offered help. He refused. He only had one shovel. We asked him if he had another. He said he had one at his house. We asked him if he would go get it while we worked on shoveling the dirt. He refused. We asked if he would let us help if we found some shovels ourselves. He said yes. We immediately went to a couple members’ houses we knew had shovels and they let us borrow a couple. We then went back to help him. He was quite surprised. We helped him for 50 min or so. We then returned Saturday morning to help him shovel some more. He did not show up but we still finished filling in the one side of his house with dirt. That took the two of us an hour and a half.

Week 94

So we sent Elder Rios to Mexico yesterday. Elder Tillotson, my last companion, whom I trained to be a district leader, because he was going to need to help his new companion be a new district leader, is now a new district leader himself. Elder Ponce will be training again. 

I am freaking out with all the things that I need to get done. I have become a master at sewing with a thread and needle because by now all my stuff is falling apart. I fixed the hem in couple of my pants. I have resewn on a million buttons. I have fixed one of my suit coats myself. I fixed my backpack.

Week 93

I don't have a whole lot to say. It looks like Elder Rios will not be leaving until transfers. 

This last week we almost lost all of our baptismal dates. We found out that two of our dates, who are living together and not married, actually have a no contact order. One of them has her residency, the other is illegal and has already been deported twice; he has no problem making it back over the border. Apparently, the reason for the no contact order is because he has abused her and the ward has known. 

Two of our other dates were not meeting with us and we were not able to help them progress. We were about to drop the date when we were finally able to reset the baptismal date. 

Our other baptismal date has had no contact with us for more than a week; we are still trying to work with him. 

........ All I have to say is that it is starting to become very difficult not to be trunky.

Week 92

I just talked to you all yesterday, but I did not exactly talk about what had happened in the week. This last week we set a baptismal date in the YSA ward. It was exciting because the missionaries have not had work there in quite a while. We set the baptismal date right after we played basketball on Friday night. We play basketball in Aberdeen every Friday night with investigators and members. We had a lesson right after, we finished basketball at 9:10. Remember that we are supposed to be home by 9 unless in a lesson. Then we can return home at 9:30. We were in Aberdeen so it takes 20 minutes to drive to American Falls and we still needed to find someone that could give us a ride because we don't have the miles to drive up there ourselves every week like that. So we had the lesson, which went until 10:10. We set a baptismal date but at that rate we were going to get home way late. After the lesson we could not find a ride so we had to go spend the night with Elder Zamora. We got super rebuked by the zone leaders (which I am not surprised nor am I mad).

There are different levels of obedience in the mission. There are those that just don't care about being obedient. There are those that are overzealous about being strictly obedient. There are those that are only obedient when it is convenient and when it is not convenient they think it is fine to disobey rules. Then there are those that are strictly obedient and understand that on rare occasion there are some exceptions to rules. (which is the category that I would place myself)

I would give judgment on rules thus. Is it a want or a need? And if it is a need, is there another way to do things to fulfill the need without breaking rules (even if it is inconvenient)? I am determined that exceptions to rules should not be common. It was a rare occasion in the Book of Mormon when someone was told to murder someone else and have it be OK  Nephi, and Tiancom when he snuck in one time to murder the leader of the other army. But then he thought that it was OK to do that, and he went to do it again, but out of anger the second time and he did not have the help of the Lord and he died. I am determined that the rules we have, have been given to us by a prophet and that we ought to obey them. Yes on occasion there are exceptions, which brings in the principles of priesthood keys. (we were trained on this in the leadership training meeting one time.)

A week or two ago we helped some people remove a fence. Other than that we have not done a ton of service. 

Elder Rios went to Salt Lake last week because he went to go see the Mexican consulate. They just got a picture and fingerprints and stuff. He flew back the same day at 11:00 o'clock at night. We had to go pick him up. He will probably be getting his visa this week. Then it will just be Elder Ponce and I. 

We will be moving apartments again. Every time I get moved I also move apartments as well. I will have served in 4 areas and 10 apartments, by the end of my mission. I sure hope I don't get Emergency transferred right after we move. I moved right before I got to this area and I will move right when I get to my new area. I have already been cleaning the crap out of the apartment we currently live in because it was a mess when I got here.