Ice Cream and Parking Lots

Hello all. 

      This week was one of intensive eating, exercising, and finding. 

Elder Hamilton of the 70 came to our zone conference and gave a message about rallying our wards to become more missionary minded and to find a couple families within our ward to lead by example by teaching them lessons regularly and extending them the commitment to teach others that they see in their daily lives. We've tried to get in contact and have visited the 3 families Elder Duffin have in our ward but no success yet and that's ok!!!! We can just keep trying and have faith like always!!!! 

If anyone is interested... I broke all the odds by gaining 7 pounds over the short span of 3 days. It's amazing what anxiety can do to a person. 5 bucks for 2 gallons of ice cream can become the glue that holds you and your companion together while on a mission. Elder Duffin and I have found it much more productive to just ditch our car and walk main streets all day long this summer because we will find more people out walking by bus stops or just loitering in grocery store parking lots rather then us knocking on the doors of homes during the day time hours of 12-5 pm. We walked a total of 80 miles this week and have managed to talk to at least 20 people a day who are somewhat interested. Hopefully that will lead to more lessons in the future. Our feet have massive blisters and the way we just hobble around in our apartment at night is hysterical but it's making time pass along and we enjoy joking about how much we hurt but being out and about so much really builds up the missionary spirit. 

On Sunday one of the members in our elders quorum class gave Elder Duffin and I a lecture on spiritual effort and talked about all the success he had on his mission in South Africa. It was really a wonderful opportunity to practice keeping my mouth shut and just agreeing with him because I've found that this mission or really life in general isn't about me. People can be hypocritical or lecture you all they want but at the end of the day.... God's opinion and his knowledge of your good works and the intentions of your heart are the only factors that matter on the last day. Some members of the church seem to forget the fact that they aren't God or his prophet but that news isn't new. I've learned much about the nature of the natural man and what we can all do as individuals to scrub away that dark messy stain that satan may spill upon the clean white button down shirt that represents our souls. I love every one and good things to come!!!! 

In the pictures we found this dangerous caged tunnel that went over the freeway... there was a dude just chillin up there so we went and talked to him. Also found a cool nature trail where we saw a group of homeless people that wanted to talk about God, good stuff.