Look at those lips!

Pues, this week has felt pretty long actually. Having three different companions in one week is quite a change! People have asked me if I will be homesick about Emma...nah. I will be fine. Keep sending the pictures; I can take it. I was sad on p-day, but it didn’t last longer than that…. Sorry to the rest of the family; she and Jessica, I feel like, are the only ones in the family I ever pray for anymore. 

So I did end up getting those Costco pictures from Mom. It was kind of funny. We were at Costco shopping, and I knew they might be coming. Then our ride showed up at 3:00 so we had to leave. I went to the picture place, and they said they wouldn’t be ready until 3:30. So I had to leave without the pictures. We got home, and I was just going crazy and couldn’t take it. I called president to ask him permission to drive to Costco to get the pictures. He said, “I am at Costco right now! I will just get them for you!” So he picked them up, and it did cost money which was ok. I just paid him back. Then I went and picked them up in the office the next day and walked around showing them to all the office staff. Not an effective use of time, I guess, but I was excited. I carry a couple in my scriptures to show people when it comes up in conversation...with me, it pretty much does come up in every conversation. I'm sure it drives my companions crazy.

My newly decorated desk. (Notice the baby pictures already on his desk!)

So we got the funniest rejection so far this week. We weren’t sure how to deal with it. We knocked on this guy’s door, and he opened the door, and we shook his hand. Then immediately he said, “I'm working,” and he walked away. He left the door wide open, walked over like 15 feet to the right, turned his table saw back on, and started working. So we were still standing there with the door open and weren’t sure if that meant we were supposed to come back later or just not at all? Either way it was funny. We didn’t really know how to react; we kind of just looked at each other then decided to walk away.

So we knew all week that we would have to split our area but they refused to give us any guidance on how. They just said, “Pray about it and figure out how to split it and who gets which area.” We still haven’t even done it yet, because we have no idea and both obviously want the few golden people that we have. We will have to figure it out before six of course.

So I have a sales pitch all ready to go for dad when I get home. Google Eden and Huntsville: a couple of the prettiest, snowy places I have ever seen, a hidden paradise right inside the Ogden Canyon. There are a few time shares right inside the town. One of them is called Wolf Creek. Dad can get one so that he can take me back to my mission. Huntsville/Eden are amazing places. We went there all morning yesterday. The zone leaders want us to kind of help out the missionaries there that are struggling by just showing up to study with them occasionally and going out with them in their area for a few hours. It was needed. They had for the past few weeks something like forty received referrals and 10 contacted. I have no idea why English missionaries never go and contact referrals. On the rare chance we get them, we go back like every hour until we contact them. We helped them out getting a few. There were three of us, and they are a trio so we broke up and contacted. Hopefully that helped them out. I still haven’t done any exchanges yet this transfer, so I really need to get on that.

Miguel's baptism is this Thursday evening at seven if anyone wants to come. Bring a future member. We promise there will be refreshments. We kind of had an ‘a-ha’ moment in studies last week that we need to  get more help from our ward mission leader. We talked to President Reyna (counselor in mission presidency), and he is going to do a training in our ward to tell everyone what their job is, because right now we aren’t getting any help at all from anyone except Hermano Rubio who got baptized four months ago and goes out with all the missionaries in our ward and the neighboring one probably nine times a week at the least. We would give him a break, but he loves it, and no one else is quite as willing.

District meeting went well. I got sick of being the boring district leader who does role plays and scriptures the whole time so I did a game so that everyone else doesn’t just wish they were in the other district. It is where one person leaves, and we all decide to be one person. For example, we are all Bathsheba. Then the person comes in and in as few effective questions as possible, they have to figure out who we are. They ask something like, “What have you been doing today,” and we answer with something like, “Oh, just bathing in my backyard.” It was pretty fun. It took up more time than I thought, but it did get the point across about how important it is to ask questions to figure out "who people are." Then I trained on finding and the importance of asking questions with finding.

So we taught a lesson to a guy from Guatemala last night, and he is like the best investigator I have ever had. He said such awesome things...like, "Oh, I get it. So the Book of Mormon just covers all the stuff that the Bible isn’t clear on?" or "I guess I need to read it all and pray about it to figure out, right?" He is a really good guy, but he went out of town today for a little while. I hope he doesn’t stay for too long, but vacation usually means forgetting about the missionaries.

We got a referral for a lady that cancelled a lot of lessons in the past. We saw her again and set one up. Maybe things will be different now. We taught a couple lessons to Miguel, and there weren’t any issues there. We really need to work on talking less. Our lessons are always way, way longer than we want. Me and Elder Martinez aren’t a good mix since neither one of us ever wants to stop talking. It probably won't help me training since that means I will learn to be talking a lot more until he gets a feel for the lessons. It is really good that he speaks Spanish already though since he was born in Guatemala.

I don't think I mentioned that in this email yet. My new companion got here. He is Elder Carbrera and from San Francisco.  He just got in this morning. We picked him just a couple hours ago. He is Elder Martinez's uncle (Guatemalteco). It has been a really short amount of time, so I really haven't talked to him at all, but he has a really nice men’s warehouse suit so I like him already, ha-ha. I will get a picture of us for next week

The Carrera family proved impossible to find last week with all the sickness that has been going around. The sickness is killing the work. Nobody can come to church! Manuel's wife should be having her baby today, I think. They were going to have to do a C-section, because she had preeclampsia. So obviously they didn’t go to church. That’ll be rough since that means they probably won’t go to church for a few weeks after they have the baby. We went and visited Hubert and his new baby who is three weeks old...not as cute as Emma, but it was cool to see a new baby. I could kind of squint my eyes and look at her and at least pretend it was Emma.

I wasn’t nearly as distracted as I thought I would be about Emma though during the week. I have managed to stay pretty happy about it all. So anyways, that’s it for this week. No more baptismal dates after Miguel. We really need to work hard. It has been tough to find new people, hard to know how to be effective. We have dinner tonight with la Familia Fonseca and their daughter leaves on a mission tomorrow, so they wanted the "missionary spirit" in their home the day before she left.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! Love you all,

Elder Bassett

FHE with Diana's family

The new planning system