Heart, Might, Mind, & Strength : Week 12 Was Busy!

Good morning everyone!

It's Elder DeGraw again. The weathers actually been in the 80's this week, prayers really do work! The biking has gotten much easier now. How's little old Rexburg doing? Any major snowstorms on the horizon? It looks like you've gotten lucky with all those sweet sunsets. So this week...

Monday and Tuesday were both regular missionary days. We had lessons later in the day, so most of the morning and afternoon we visited less actives. The most exciting part of the day came in an email I received from President. First, transfers are on Halloween. We can only proselyte until 6. If we don't have any lessons after 6, we have to be in our apartment for the rest of the day. Second, I just copied and pasted... "About 160 missions (out of 422 missions worldwide) will be receiving smart phones. They will be used instead of tablets. We don't know all the details for our mission, but we expect to receive the smart phones in the Spring of 2018. We'll get you more details about that as we receive them. We do know that those of you with tablets will continue to use them until the end of your missions." Pretty stinking crazy!

Wednesday was one of the best days this week. I took over my area for the day because my district leader has to finish up his exchanges before November. Elder Kuewa went to the district leader's area and Elder Newman came to mine. We left the apartment around 8 AM to go do service for a member; Brother Gaytan. Both Elder Newman and I are still pretty new, so we laughed about them trusting the "greenies" with a whole area. It was easy to feel excited and we were both anxious to tackle the day ahead and give it our all. We arrived at Brother Gaytans and instantly got to work. My job was removing the hills of dirt in the front yard. Once we had finished, we were rewarded with fried chicken and a little bit of heaven (mashed potatoes). The rest of the day went smoothly. We taught two lessons and ended our day with a game of chess. Elder Newman is a great missionary and you would never have guessed he's still green. I was exhausted at the end of the day, having my own area is stressful stuff.

Thursday was a good day. We woke up and jogged to the church for zone sports-- dodgeball was the game everyone had voted on. After, we had studies and then headed off to district meeting. Here's a few pictures of the finest Elders in the Scottsdale Mission. Since it's the last week in the transfer, we had a district lunch. Chick-fil-a or Panda Express were the two options it came down to. I voted for Plan A which was the winner. We returned home to finish companion study, and Elder Kuewa brought up one of our investigators named Ron. Ron is a super funny guy; I always get excited to teach him because I know there'll be some good laughs. Elder Kuewa brought up something Ron had said in a lesson. For the last 10 minutes of companion studies, we both just laughed and laughed until we were in tears. We tried to pull ourselves together, and I would fold my arms to say the prayer, but then we would lose it again. Haha, mission laughs are the best laughs.

Friday nothing really happened.

Saturday was a pretty decent day. The morning and afternoon were so slow, but I pushed through and made it to the Stewart Ward block party at 5:00. The party was huge-- about 600ish people came. There were many nonmembers and some of them were interested in meeting with missionaries. I was planning on taking more pictures, but I only got one. It's Elder Gibbons (zone leader) and I waiting for investigators to come so we could show them a mormon message.

Sunday was the day we got transfer news. Here's what happened. I'm staying in Maricopa and my new companion is Elder Bird. He's coming down from Snowflake and I believe he's from Illinois. Elder Kuewa had the craziest out of all the Elders (to me at least). He's heading to Central Phoneix where he'll be biking, training again, and he's district leader. He's excited but not happy about biking.

Monday was a normal Pday except for we went to the Phoenix Zoo! It was so sweet and I took more pictures then I can count. It wasn't as fun as going to a zoo with your family, but I still enjoyed being with the other Elders. We basically had the whole zoo to ourselves too.

I hope you all have a safe week! Remember CPR. Church, prayer, and read. These three things are vital to our spiritual well-being. Have a great Halloween, watch out for spiders!

Love Elder DeGraw

6265 N 82nd St

Scottsdale, AZ 85250