Hey Fam:)
Well we have officially accomplished the goal we set out to accomplish. Our 100 hours of work have come and gone, and we are excited with some of the results and learning experiences we have learned from it. I have been wanting to push myself to the next level somehow to try and see more progress in my mission. Elder Richards and I were pondering what we could do to step it up to the next level. We knew that this a cool opportunity to have a companion that we get along so well with, so we set the bar high. We knew we were going to do the 100 hour week on our second week of this transfer. So we started planning it then, and honestly we have been planning it our whole missions. We needed to prepare ourselves to have the necessary teaching skills to teach any topic people needed to hear on the spot. It was a lot of fun to keep going hard all day every day... even though the 5:30 mornings killed our bodies! We even tossed a 4:30 morning on Saturday to go to a family week stake activity... I PLAYED SOCCER ON A SOCCER FIELD!! #FirstTimeInTheMission
Anyway, We had this entire planned out by morning schedules and evening schedules Monday-Wednesday for the different areas we were going to work in. Then the other half of the week we were going to hit return appointments and sift through the people we found to really focus on the elect. We ended up teaching 53 lessons, found 58 new investigators, and had 98 total people taught. It isn't about the numbers, but that was a huge accomplishment for me to know that we touched the hearts of that many souls this week. It was no easy task, but it is something I will remember forever. I can do hard things.
So as we evaluate what happened in the week it is fun to try and pull data out of what we have done. Since we were outside all day, we can see what times we were finding most of our people. We found that you can find families in the morning before they send their kids off to school, and set return appointments for later when they get home. The afternoon has always been hard for me in my mission. It is super hot... SUPER HOT... people are at work or school, and we usually get punted a lot. We saw this in full force as our tired bodies were walking around in the heat of the day this week haha. The people here all have siestas. This is when they come home for a nap in the middle of the day. We had that same set up in our planning to have a one hour lunch/nap at the house each day. We realized that saved us haha. It gave us the peace of mind to have a morning schedule and and evening schedule, and the nap also rejuvenated our bodies. I think if I were to apply something I learned this week it might be to work more often in the mornings. You can find a lot of people that don't see the missionaries every day at the same times we usually work. If we do studies in the afternoon we don't have to fight their culture of the naps in the heat. We can work with their culture to use our time most effectively. It could vary by areas, but that was something we noticed with the times we were teaching people lessons. We kept data on it the best we could.
We ended up getting a new family of 6 to church this week. We have an upcoming baptism, and another family that is progressing really well. The blessings seemed so obvious until our very last appointment of the 100 hour week to our most progressing family I have mentioned in the past emails. The Delacruz family had a ton of family over for their grandpas birthday. Sadly, the father had given in to his brother in laws and was drinking with them. It was so sad that I might not see them again to help him overcome that. I was kind of upset with God to be honest. After working so hard that had to happen. I went home that night and ended up jump roping to 3,500 and still wasn't that tired. I prayed about it though and felt so much hope and love from the spirit. The their family is super strong, and so is the Atonement;) I have no doubts they will continue to progress.
There were a lot of fun things we did throughout the week to keep us sane! This was what we called the TTDTNFTFO! [Tit-dit-n-fit-fo] This was straight up inspiration from God that we got in our planning before we started the week. It is an acronym for "Things To Do To Not Flip the Fetch Out." On this we had a lot of ice cream, afternoon 1 hour nap, games while OYMing. (Such as using special words in the door approach on the spot) We had hot cheesy pandasal every morning, and just our stupid personalities together just made it fun haha!
On Saturday I found out that all the progress in this area will be going on with out me...Not going to lie, I was super surprised to find out I am transferring. I know Elder Richards will be able to keep the progress going in our area/zone though. I am super excited to go work in Baliwag!! I will be a zone leader over their with my new comp Elder Stuwart! He is from American Fork if I remember right, so I get to add one more close mission buddy for after the mission! That zone has so much potential to grow because it is basically all trainers and trainees. It will be fun to hopefully be a positive influence on each of them, and also to learn from their eagerness to learn. It will re-boost my desires to keep pushing myself and keep growing. Although we finished our 100 hour week, I know that when you reach the top of the mountain, don't say you did it. Look around for a taller mountain in the horizon and work towards climbing that one. Joshua 14:12 has a sentence in it that I love. It says "Now therefore give me this mountain" I love the mission. I have been beyond grateful for these last 6 weeks serving with Elder Richards. I was sad to say goodbye to my good friend Elder Aiono this morning, but look forward to change. I hope you all find your next mountain too! Love you all!!
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