The Week of The Car

Family!

Let me start by telling you how my morning started off to show you just how tough we have it here in Ohio.  We start each morning with a run in our neighborhood, and this morning we decided instead of the usual exercise, we would go for a doughnut run.  A literal doughnut run.  For our exercise we ran to this little family owned bakery near our house and bought doughnuts, then ran back to the apartment and ate them!  It was the perfect way to negate all the effects of our running!  And let me tell you, they were the best doughnuts I have ever eaten.  They put Krispy Kreme to shame.  So yeah, we've got it pretty rough out here...

Well, this week has been awesome, and there was one experience in particular that made it so good.  We went on exchanges with the new Spanish Elders, and Elder Graf went with Elder Taylor down to Dayton leaving me up here in our area with Elder Garcia.  Elder Garcia has been out 3 weeks, and I've been out 3 months, so we had less than 4 months experience between the two of us.  But, because he was so new, I was senior companion for the day!  Which means.........I GOT TO DRIVE A CAR!!!!!  That might not seem like a big deal, but one thing I've been missing recently is driving.  It has been 3 months since I last drove, and we do a lot of driving out here, but since I'm not the "designated driver" of our companionship, I just ride along.  But I finally got to drive!  And I didn't crash! =)  But anyways, I was in charge of the area for the day, which was super exciting, but also a lot of pressure.  It was up to me to take the lead in everything and come up with things for us to do.  But it worked out really well, and me and Elder Garcia had a great time.  We did have a pretty crazy experience with one of our lessons though.  We went to teach a guy named F-------.  F------- has been taught everything.  Everything from the restoration to tithing, he's heard it.  And he's been being taught for nearly 6 years!  So we went to go teach him the about the sacrament again and try to get him to come to church.  The lesson was going really well, but all of the sudden it took a crazy tangent, and we were out of nowhere talking about Adam and Eve!  I have to still concentrate pretty hard to understand what people are saying, so I had no idea how we had got to that point.  I kept trying to bring us back on topic, but I still don't have the language skills to cut someone off and take complete control of the lesson again, so I just had to sit and wait for an opportunity.  Elder Garcia had the language skills, but he lacked the teaching experience to know how to get us back on track.  So we both kind of just sat there, trying to get the lesson back on track, while F------- talked and talked and talked about the beginning of the world and all of his beliefs about all sorts of stuff.  We ended up finally stopping it and ending the lesson alright, but it was a pretty crazy experience.

Here's another story about a new investigator we found.  We were on exchanges and had just tried to contact a potential investigator, but they didn't answer, so we were headed back to the car to go to our next appointment.  I saw a guy sitting on his porch, and I had the idea that I should go talk to him.  He was in no wise Hispanic, but I went anyway and started talking to him.  He wasn't interested in what we had to say in the slightest, so the conversation was pretty brief.  At the end of talking with him, I asked him if there was anyone who spoke Spanish nearby.  He pointed us to his neighbor's house, so we went to try it.  No one answered, but since finding Spanish speakers is rare, we made note of it and decided to visit it again next time we were in the area.  We were in the area yesterday, so we tried it.  A guy answered the door and immediately let us in.  That was pretty surprising!  We had a really good first lesson with him (J-----), and we set up a time later in the week to meet with him.  Asking referrals from people really works!

Here are just a few other things worth noting from this week:

--We taught the T----- family again.  It went well, but for some reason they were really concerned about what types of meat we are allowed to eat in our church.  They brought it up again and again, and it was kind of weird...

--Our ragtag futbol team is growing!  We had 12 people there on Saturday!

--We spent 3 full hours digging through nearly 6 years’ worth of records in our area while splitting the area book for the new Elders. Lots of paperwork!

--There are some amazing member families out here.  We eat with the English ward every other week and one member said this: "I figure we're all here to build the Lord's kingdom, so if we're not doing that, then what are we doing?"  I really liked that quote.

--We have started singing to invite the Spirit into our lessons.  We're not too good, and we still need to work on learning the hymns in Spanish, but I have definitely gained a testimony of the power of music this past week.

--Ohio has some pretty cool sunsets!

And that's about it!  Thanks so much for the package last week!  That was amazing!  I'll send a picture of my reaction....  I do have a request.  It's not urgent, but when you get the chance, could you maybe send me a few talks?  In particular I would like:

"Seek Learning by Faith" by Elder Bednar, 2006; "The Fourth Missionary" by Lawrence E. Corbridge; and "Becoming a Consecrated Missionary" by Tad R. Callister.  If you could find those and get them to me anytime in the future, I would really appreciate it!

Love,

Elder Foote

Colby's expression when he opened Mom's amazing package.

I got to drive!!

A sunset over Huber Heights Road..

How awesome is this sunset?!?  We're right by the air force base, so we get all sorts of cool airplane exhaust patterns.

The results of our literal doughnut run.  The best doughnuts I ever had.