Elder Taylor Bassett: This week has flown by, and so has the p-day

A little taste of Hawaii? We went all out today...20 dollars for unlimited sushi and two appetizers. I ate a lot more than just what's in the pictures. Only three of us did it. I have never eaten that much of anything at once in my entire life. This is us eating the last bite. If you don't finish everything you order, you have to pay extra for it.
...best part is we went to the jump park right after.

(I think he took this picture and sent it just to make his mom feel queasy.)

Today was a pretty good p-day. I am writing at the end of the day which is unusual. So this morning, we hiked a mile and half up to some wind caves. It was just going to be our zone then someone invited an entire other zone, so it was a big group of people. We ran on the way down. It was fun; it reminded me of Camelback. Then we went home and did studies. After that, we went grocery shopping, then ate Japanese food...unlimited sushi. Then straight from there, we went to the jump park (not a good idea to go right after eating unlimited sushi). Now we are here doing emails....

So we had one cool experience this week. We were at the end of the night, and I looked at my planner and there was an address scheduled into our night, and I didn't know where it came from. I looked around in our phone and planner and everything and had no idea where it came from, but Elder Salazar had it down too so we went to see who it was, and it was a member. She had been feeling a lot of pain and needed a blessing to be able to go to the temple the next day. So that was cool seeing how the Lord put us there, and we still don't know how it got in our planners. But the best part was her daughter was there, and she said she works at paradise bakery in Logan! She said if we ever come when she is working she will give us a 70 percent discount. Ok well that's not the best part,; but that was pretty awesome I had no idea they had those here.

I went on exchanges with Elder Larsen this week, Elder Ward's son. It went pretty well. I went to his area, and Elder Sutherland came to mine. That meant nothing at all got done in my area to Elder Salazar's disappointment; he had really wanted to work. But Elder Larsen and I had a good lesson and set up five more lessons tracting which is good; they have been struggling lately.

We had some issues the next day with a couple missionaries in my district, and I had to go with the zone leaders to talk to a couple people. Why won't people just be obedient?!!?! I had a good time with the zone leaders preparing our obedience speeches though.

So this week we picked up a really solid, new investigator. He was recently taught by the sisters, but he lives in our area so they finally got the referral to us once he went on a two week vacation, and he got back last week, and we found him. We taught him a lesson, and he accepted a date and said he wanted to come to church to be more sure about baptism. He came, and he loved it and knew half the people there. We have a guy in our ward who looks EXACTLY like Bill Cosby who saw him and ran up and hugged him like they were childhood best friends, so that went very well. His name is Hernan. Then we had PEC after church and this time, luckily, they started with missionary work. We went through and everyone was helpful. Then the bishop said he had been thinking a lot about missionary work and wanted to start doing splits every Wednesday where four members take us out (the four missionaries in the ward) to our lessons, and if they fall through then they will drive us to nonmembers for us to teach. We were beyond excited, and I told them how happy I was to be in the ward, and they seemed excited to work.

Ana Moto promised us she would go to church, but then Sunday morning her little boy got really sick and couldn't breathe so she had to bring him to the emergency room; of course that would happen Sunday morning. The adversary works hard. But she felt bad and wants to go next week. We had had a really, really solid lesson with her about church and the restoration. She started out saying that she didn't want to go to church and ended the lesson saying that she really wanted to. It was cool to see her change just within an hour. We are getting really close to her, and she is opening up to us and is still iffy about baptism, but that's ok; it'll change soon. We have just been focusing so much on church and reading for now before touching back on it.

Miguel came to church, and we have taught him two more lessons. His mom is going to talk to him and see if he actually wants to get baptized since he is only eight, but she said as long he wants to and knows what it is then he can do it. He is a good kid and really likes church, but he doesn't remember hardly anything of what we have taught him, but that's how all kids are.

We have been doing marriage counseling basically for Lenny and his girlfriend, Nery. (They have one kid together, but they aren't married so maybe it's just relationship counseling). But we finally got her to come out of her room for the lesson after Lenny kind of dragged her out. She sat on the couch, folded her arms and said, "I hate everyone and don't want to look at any of you." At the beginning, it was basically 45 minutes of me getting her to try to open up. At first I would ask if she wanted to be happy, and she would say "No, I hate everyone!" or I would say do you think Jesus wants to help you, and she would say, "I'm just ugly and stupid and nobody likes me so I should just stay in my room all day."...so after a lot of scriptures on the atonement and essentially a copy of mom's speech on "Nobody likes me, everyone hates me, guess I'll go eat worms" I don't think she had ever heard that before, but as we kept talking she started to fight with Lenny, and she yelled at him, "I don't want to leave. I just want to work things out with you!" and I stopped them both right there and pointed out she had finally said that she did have a desire to make things better in her life. By that point, she was starting to get more honest so I asked her all of the same questions again this time telling her to tell us the truth, and she said yes she wanted to be happy and would change things to do it. We told her how she has done the same thing for a long time, and it hasn't worked so she needed to try something different. She got that and agreed. So that night and the next morning they prayed together and even read in the scriptures. We went by the next day, and there was a lot less tension, but she still wouldn't make eye contact or smile at all. We taught another lesson this time on faith and repentance. At the end, I said, "Nery, by the time we are through with you I need to see you smile at least once,” and she started to smile but then grabbed a pillow and covered her face up, because she didn't want to lose the no-smiling game she plays with us. It's kind of like when a little kid is trying to throw a fit and you say whatever you do don't smile! And then they can't help but smile and start laughing. She has dealt with a lot of abuse, so she just needs some growing up to do and some help. It is really too funny to see her and Lenny interact, because when he switches to English he has the funniest accent ever. At one point she said, “Well that's not fair, because there are people in the jungle that never get to be baptized where will they go?" After we answered that question, in his really bad accent, Lenny said, "Nery, you not in the jungle, I think you gonna be fine." It's kind of one of those things where you have to be there. But they are both really funny to watch interact. On top of that during the lesson the 13-year-old lesson had overdosed on her pain killers the doctor gave her for her foot, and she was making faces at everyone while the two year olds ran back and forth across the room screaming the ENTIRE time. Lessons in that house are the worst, because it is so loud and hectic with how many people live there that I leave being extremely stressed. We can't do lessons anywhere else either, because she won't leave the house.

We found and taught two lessons to another lady named Elsa, but I don't think we will go back with her, because she refuses to accept a prophet or other scripture and is really prideful about her Christian church. We still have a lot of potentials and a lot of ideas on how to do missionary work but of course all of them don't really involve the members, and as much as possible, we are trying to work with them first. We still have a split every night so that has been good. Last week I got more member presents than I have ever gotten, still not a lot, but it's an improvement.

Tonight we have an FHE with a 15-year-old girl in the ward and her family. This 15 year old girl came up to us at church and said she wanted us to visit her friend up the street but not tell her that Tiffany (girl in ward) sent us there. So I went and talked to the girl up the street and at the end of the conversation when she said she would be interested I said, "Hey do you know a girl named Tiffany?" and she said, “Yeah she lives up the street!” I said, "No way! I have seen her at church, and she is your age... I had no idea she lived over there. Hey would it be ok if we taught your lessons at her house? We can ask her. I'm sure she wouldn't mind." So then we went back to Tiffany and told her to set up an fhe and that will be tonight. Tiffany wasn't happy; she wanted to be "anonymous" and "just see what happened with it," but we wanted to involve the members in it so it worked out well.

Well I think that's pretty much it for this week.

I love you all very much. Take care!

Elder Bassett

"Scar! Brother, help!"

Service project: there's actually a story with it..we showed up late as the English missionaries were trying to chip away at this cement in the ground thinking they could break it up enough to get it flat with the ground..so we came up and started to dig it out and they all said no no that's impossible it's connected to the foundation..we got it out a few minutes after and the joke was it's because the hispanics were the ones doing it and are the only ones who really know how to do landscaping. (I am part hispanic now).