Week 8

Hows it going everyone? 

This week has been a little rough. Things are going alright though, my companion and I are.. I don't know, its hard to explain sometimes things are great sometimes they aren't essentially. It's been making it increasingly difficult. 

I wish that we did more service, I keep wanting to find like a homeless shelter and volunteer there once a week (were allowed 4 hours of community service every week), but my companion doesn't want to, which is frustrating, because people will learn to trust you more if you serve them, etc. 

In the two weeks I've been here, we finally did a language study... were supposed to every morning for 30 minutes to an hour. I'm not exactly sure how he expects me to learn the language if I dont get time to study it though. Sometimes I feel like we waste a lot of time that we should be doing more productive things, like for example the other day he wanted to take an entire HOUR for lunch and he just wanted to relax and stuff and it just is getting super frustrating. 

Since he's the district leader he had 14 hour training in Sparks, and he had to go to that so I went on splits with an elder in Tahoe (California part of the mission) and it's super pretty over there. I took a bunch of pictures. Hopefully I can send some, I'm on a library computer today so i'm not really sure.

The Elder I went on splits with was pretty cool though, howeverrrrrr I'm glad were not companions because, they were very not productive days. I was only with him for a day thankfully, I mean I think maybe because his companion was the senior companion and was at the training too that he kind of just wanted to do a mini vacation or something. I was glad my companion isn't like that at least. He woke up at 6:30 though like were supposed to and then went out and layed on the couch and was like the rule book just says you have to get out of bed it doesn't say you can't go back to sleep. and He slept (tried to), I was trying to talk to him some till 8. It was a good experience that made me appreciate my companion a little more though. We did teach 2 lessons that day though. and then we tried to do a 3rd but the guy is apparently pretty suicidal and we called and went to his house and he didn't answer and the card they had put in his door was there from 4 days previous in the exact same spot. I'm not sure what actually happened yet because we didn't find out but yea... kind of crazy. Super sad too. The same Elder in Tahoe, his companion and him hit a bear about a month ago.

Back to Carson City though, I have met a couple people who are from the Seattle Area. One of them I am friends with people that they are friends with which was pretty funny. The Robinson family, they moved 2 years ago. The dad apparently worked at Microsoft in Redmond too. They have several kids my age (I know their friends) but they are both serving missions right now. Kind of cool though!

There are always funny stories! Since I'm helping him with his English its been really funny, the other day I was like why do you have so much junk? and he looked at me all confused and was like Que es junk? (what is junk) I died of laughter. 

Second Funny story, at the training that my companion went to, he saw one of his other Elder friends and he was like "Hey elder ArellanoI I hear you got called to be the president of the relief society in Carson!" and Elder Arellano didn't get the joke until he told me two days later and I'm just laughing really hard. OH. the joke is because my companion is the district leader of a district comprised of all girls. 4 girl championships. I think you'd have to be Mormon to get the joke, it was pretty funny though. 

We met a lady named lilly last week and when we met her, she had gotten out of jail that day and she was only in for a couple of days but she was praying to god that she would change her ways and not 20 minutes after she got home we showed up. She was like This is a sign from god. Not only that but we were there to visit her dad actually and we had had his name for 3 months(thats what my comp said) and we had randomly chosen that day to meet him. 

We teach a boy named angel several times a week last week he expressed some fears he's had and nightmares and I gave him suggestions and this past week i followed up and asked him how it was going and he said that he puts his BOM next to him every night while he sleeps (I didn't suggest that) but it was really cool to see his willingness. 

In the Book Jesus the Christ, it says Jesus only taught the last 3 years of his life. It also said that Jesus walked 40 miles to where John the Baptist was so that he could have the proper authority of baptism. Thought both of those interesting!

We had several Spanish members cancel on going with us to Spanish lessons which sucked and so I was thinking about what we could do and we both said we should go walking. Then I asked him where was a place that he had no success with street contacting and he told me and I was like okay lets go there. We went there. and BOOM. met several people. One was an 85 year old man who is almost all the way blind, German man. Reminded me a lot of Pa, h'es a catholic and we talked about his life and when we left we said a prayer, when I opened my eyes he was crying and thought that was cool. 

I am doing good, love you all! 

Elder Quinton

Pictures from Tahoe