July 27, 2015 Oh, to be a kid again

First, I wanted to thank the CTR 5 class for their letters!  It made me smile!

Now I have a question for you guys.  Do you know of any good object lessons?  Cause since we are teaching a bunch of 9 year olds, we need to help them enjoy it and make sense to them.

This has been a super good week!  First off, we had 11 people come to church, most of which haven't been in a very, very long time!  That was awesome!  Second, we are now teaching 3 of the Whitehawk grand children, one of which is Mayla (I will get into that more in a bit), and I have officially eaten Ostrich!  Sister Browne gave us the left over package of patties (they were Ostrich burgers) and we cooked them up at the Group Leaders house.  Fun!

So, update on the Whitehawks.  First off, Vina's grandson, Daeden, is extremely quiet and doesn't know anything about God or Jesus Christ, so we have to start from square one.  He said maybe 5 words when we were there.  Than when we went over to Eugenios house to teach Mayla and Genio, I put my questions to the test.  Mayla doesn't understand almost any sign language.  She knows just enough to servive around the house, and a little bit more, some of which she made up herself.  But she reads well so we will be doing a lot of writing and video watching haha!  Genio is great, he understands very well and seems to soak it all in.  

Story time!  After we taught Genio and Mayla, Mayla signed "Play" to us, so we looked at each other, looked at our watches, than decided it would be good to play with the kids.  We played tag, hide and seek (within sight and sound of each other of course), and man has it been a long time since I have done any running!  It was a blast though!  After a while, one of the littlest girls (probably 5 ish) started to cry, so I came over and asked her if she was okay, and she nodded and said "I just want my daddy", so I walked her into the house, and when I opened the door to let her in, her mom says "oh, sweetie, what's wrong?" to which she responded through gasps and tears "Nothing, I'm just crying!"  Man, kids are too fun!  Than we had to leave cause it was getting late.  All good things must come to an end, but man was it a good thing!  Up until that point none of the kids really responded to us, but now we are thick as thieves!

There has been a fair and rodeo in town this week, and we missed all of it except for the parade!  So dissapointed that we missed it all!  The parade was fun though.  Except they didn't have any pooper scoopers, and a lot of horse poop.   We were sitting on the back of a truck, so we stuck out pretty good, and there was a float that came by with kids that had squirt guns, and my companion said "10 bucks they aim at us."  I laughed cause I didn't want to take the bet.  Guess what?  We got soaked.  But mostly our pants!  Our shirts stayed dry, thank goodness, cause no body wants to see me with a wet white shirt.  Some of the youth from the branch were there and they just took off when the kids targeted us! We laughed pretty hard!! 

On the 24th of July, we had a get together at the Gordon Branch!  It was the best turn out that we have had since I've been here!  We played football with the youth while dinner was cooking, than we had dinner, than we watched "Meet the Mormons".  This movie is officially my favorite.  Now, I liked it before the mission, but I loved it this time.  The people are just so real!  The spirit is so strong in when watching that movie, and it's all because these people are bearing their testimonies as they live their daily life.  That is one of the things that really sticks out to me.  This isn't a religion of Sunday worship.  It is a life style.  We are who we are because of this church.  But it is more than just a church.  It is the doctrine that is taught.  I shared this before, but it comes to mind again.  When someone accused the prophet Joseph Smith of seeking power, he responded "In relation to the power over the minds of mankind which I hold, I would say, It is in consequence of the power of the truth in the doctrines which I have been an instrument in the hands of God of presenting unto them, and not because of any compulsion on my part...  I ask, Did I ever exercise any compulsion over any man? Did I not give him the liberty of disbelieving any doctrine I have preached, if he saw fit?  Why do not my enemies strike a blow at the doctrine?  They cannot do it:  it is truth, and I defy all men to upset it." (Teachings of the presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, 284)  That is how this gospel works.  We are taught doctrine, and others choose to live it.  And they are blessed because of it, which is proof of the truth of this message.  I'm always amazed at the fruits of the gospel!  This movie really brings those out so nicely too!  

That's about all the excitement for the week.  Love you all!

Elder Carter