Daniel vs Easter

Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2012 10:55:58 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

We had a pretty busy week here. Not the busy I would like, but it was still an over all good week.

Tuesday we had a bunch of appointments all in a row, but the last one cancelled. We taught Carly about the Plan of Salvation. It went really well. She has been reading a ton from the Book of Mormon. She had a few pages of notes just from the introduction and the first few chapters. She's really interested, and we can only hope her parents wont be a problem. Then we taught Alex and asked him to pray about a day to be baptized. We've had to be really careful because it seems like his mom is looking for any excuse to try and stop him, even though she's a member herself. Just really less active... So we'll follow up on that tomorrow. Oh also, on Tuesday I returned an iPhone that I had found on the road a few weeks ago. She was really grateful and gave us some candy. Unfortunately though, I don't have an iPhone anymore.... haha. Pictures below.

Wednesday we had interviews all day. President always does the Zone Leaders last and talks to us about all the people in the zone. It was pretty cool. My personal interview was really short. But then he talked to both of us about most of the people in the zone. It was really cool to hear how well President knows everyone, even though its hard to feel like he really knows you when you dont know him that well, especially when you're young in the mission. Apparently he told Elder Krueger that he was going to get more responsibility soon. Which is good for him. I cant believe I trained him 8 months ago! But no other really big news. Oh, President has asked Elder Schick to start working on the Indian Reservation that is just south of his area. So that's pretty cool. He's really excited about it.

Thursday and Friday we spent all day in Leadership trainings. It was good, but long. Thursday we were in one of my old areas, which was kinda cool. I don't really miss the Mesa Zone... But it was a really good meeting. They paired us off with people we've never been around and we taught together. It was really fun. We talked a lot about making commitments and following up. Friday was good too. In the morning we spent a lot of time in a zone leader group, talking about specific questions. Sometimes I really hate all zone leader meetings because there are too many chiefs and not enough indians. A lot of the zone leaders think they're really hot stuff... Its annoying. And I really believe it causes so many problems in zones. You cant just be the missionary police and pretend like you were never where the missionaries are, you have to be their friends and make sure they know that you're on of them. I tried to bring that up, but we didnt have time. They were too busy  arguing about something stupid. In the afternoon we had a big question and answer, and the questions were actually good this time. I won a golden chocolate egg with one of my answers. Basically along the same line as what I said earlier. People were getting into this question and the answer there were arguing about was way off. They were talking about how we need to be "Preach My Gospel" missionaries and help people become converted to the book Preach My Gospel. I brought up how I don't want to be converted to the book, I want to be converted to the gospel because that's what the book Preach My Gospel, and Elder Bednar's talk "Becoming a Preach My Gospel Missionary" is about. So I got a golden Easter egg. With these stories, I'm not trying to say that I'm more intelligent than a lot of other people, but I mean... come on.

Friday night we taught Danielle. She really wanted to be baptized. I'm not used to that. She really threw herself out there... We didn't really know how to react so it was kind of awkward for a second. But we put her on date for the 28th of April. The lesson went really well, but I felt like I wasn't entirely spiritually prepared for it.

Sunday was easter! We had church all day. And our dinner almost cancelled on us because their nephew almost died in a skateboarding accident... It was kind of awkward, I felt really bad. But it worked out great and we had a good time. We were going home after to do our weekly planning because we didn't get to do it on Friday or Saturday and we got a call from a family asking us to come over and teach their niece's boyfriend right away. I was kind of annoyed because I expected the guy to just be some thug who didn't really want to listen to us, but couldn't escape this family. I repented. Carlos was awesome. We had a really spiritual lesson with him, and he is really looking for answers and peace in life. We taught him outside by candlelight which was kind of cool. I didn't recognize the family, I think they go to a Spanish ward somewhere. But it was awesome. Too bad he lives in Mesa, and we probably wont meet with him again. But he will be taught. So its all good.

Love,
Daniel