September 12, 2016 -- Mean, Green, and Ready To Work

Holy moley it's been a crazy good week! To start with, I got my new trainee. Wednesday was our transfer meeting and since I was training I had to be in the Utica building at 9:30.  That meant that I had to leave Elmira at 6 for our 3 1/2 hour long drive.  Wednesday morning Elder Hubbell and I woke up to the Elmira Central elders in our apartment saying, "We need to get going -- why haven't you been answering your phone?" Elder Hubbell and I had forgotten to plug in the phone the night before and it had died. We set our wake up alarm on the phone so we slept in. I jumped out of my bed to get ready realizing that it was 6:40. Let's just say that it was probably the worst morning ever to wake up late. I drove the soccer mom van to Utica and I was driving as fast as tiwi would let me. Tiwi is this tiny box in all the mission vehicles that monitors our speed so we don't drive to fast. Luckily we made good time and I was able to get there at 10, so I only missed a little bit of the trainer training. It was fun to see all the mission buddies at transfers. I said goodbye to Elder Hubbell and sent him on his way to Scotia.

My new trainee is Elder Rasband.  He is some distant cousin to the apostle but he has never met him. He is from Clearfield, Utah and graduated high school this past year. He grew up in the Church and comes from a good family. He is about 6'1" but doesn't look like it in our pictures together. We get along pretty well. Luckily he can take my teasing well and even dish it back out. Don't worry though, I'm not teasing the new greenie to much. He is adjusting well to the missionary life. We have been teaching alot which has been great for him as he develops his teaching skills and gets comfortable.

We had a neat lesson this past week. One of our investigators was feeling like the LDS church wasn't the right direction. Anyway, long story short, we shared Alma 32 where it compares faith to a tree. We talked to her about how to know it is true. We have to be doing the three simple things -- going to church, reading the scriptures, and praying. She had a total epiphany and told us that she would start doing those things more consistently. It's the little things we do every day and week that make the biggest difference. That is how we nurture our tree and keep it growing.

One of the greatest parts of the week was on Sunday. We had four of our investigators come to church. One of the biggest struggles in this mission is getting investigators to church because a lot of them don't have cars. Luckily, the Elmira ward is awesome about giving rides to people and we were able to coordinate some rides for two of our investigators. The other two investigators drove themselves because they owned their own cars.

Anyway, it was a great week. The sky is blue, the Church is true and life is good.

 

Until next week,

Elder Carlile

 

 

Elder Rasband

Rocking the Soccer Mom Van