Consistently inconsistent

Hey everyone!


...yes, I have had to yet again re-schedule my P-Day. We were having a young elder conference tomorrow, which throws in a three-hour block in which we would not be able to do our P-Day stuff, as much as I love conferences like this! So, my predicament was that we either scramble around that, trying to get done all of our P-Day errands, or we re-schedule P-Day so that we don't have to worry about all of that. So, here I am. I can almost guarantee, however, that we will be having our P-Day on Wednesday from here on out; however, checking the inbox for an E-mail every day would not be a bad idea either; I wouldn't advise checking it regularly as if it were P-Day though. (that last sentence was mostly for Mom)

So, now that that's out of the way... the week has been wonderful! I hope that you all enjoyed the 4th as much as I did! This day, the first thing we all did was go on a hike to the Utah state capitol. Now, I know that we have done this type of activity before; this time, however, we had entered into the building itself, and enjoyed the artwork and displays set up for everyone to enjoy! After having done this, we continued on with our hike to the Memory Grove park here in the city. I had been down here a couple of times, and it has been a nice nature escape each time. When this was done, we returned to the stake center next to the apartments for lunch, which was catered by an Orem barbecue place known as Bam-Bam's Barbecue. This was some great barbecue, akin to some barbecue I had in Texas once - that's how you know it is good! After an after-lunch break, we all watched a movie together, "Instrument of War", a production created by BYU (because BYU is seemingly the epicenter of Mormon culture) documenting a true story of soldiers held in a German prison camp in World War II. As you may know by now, I don't like giving entire synopses of movies, as I know some people to do; I prefer to let people experience such productions themselves without any spoilers. So, just know that though it is not a perfect movie, I do recommend it. Anyway, after the movie, the rest of the day was free, and it was a nice little break from the ordinary excitement of working hard all day at zone. So, all in all, I had enjoyed the holiday.

Things have been going well at zone too. There has recently been talk of certain happenings for mission support. I think that the mission department still wants us to get more full-time missionaries from the mission trained to do this type of work; however, they will also begin training young church service missionaries to do this work also. Though it currently seems that the Global Service Center will be doing most of the formal training, they also want to have these new missionaries shadow us young elders, and watch how we do the work. So, it seems that this big contemplation on what to do with the project has ended in a bit of a compromise; we still help with doing the work, and they have CSM's who are not affected by our monthly transfers, whom we also get to help train. So, things are looking up for all of us here, especially since we have gotten another elder, Elder Rasmussen, on doing mission support as well. I think that we will also get my companion, Elder Wright, on doing this as well. I think that all of this means that I may be staying in the zone for yet a while longer. Then again, I could probably be getting transferred any month now - I have already spent a year in the zone, which is longer than anyone else here. So, I will see how much longer I stay down here in the basement; until then, I have got work to do.

I have continued to serve at St. Josephs, and it was also quite good this week. Unfortunately, my companion was not feeling very well - he did not get very much sleep at all last night, and so he was not able to go. I still had to go myself, as I was assigned to be the driver of the group. So, I check with my district to see if I could authorize an exchange between myself and a district member; however, the other companionship in the district were already assigned to help at another branch. Finally, I was able to get an exchanged authorized with Elder McNeely, leaving my companion with his, Elder Stacey (yes, my companion from about a year ago). This inconvenience made it so that we arrived at St. Joseph's a bit late, and though the situation was beyond my control, I still felt that the coordinator blamed me a bit for it. No matter - it was still a good experience at the facility, helping out the residents. I feel that Elder McNeely also liked coming with me to do this. I do look forward to next time, where I hope that everything goes well.

I also got to take part in a musical performance which i may or may not have mentioned in previous E-mails. I think I did mention something about a quintet which performed a rendition of "Because I Have Been Given Much". Well, this performance had happened last Sunday - and it was nice to take part in, though I showed up a bit too late for practice due to my St. Joseph's obligations. But, it still sounded quite good for both performances of the number - I say both because we performed for both of the mission's branches. This was one of the few situations in which I was able to attend both of these meetings in a Sunday, which I believe only happens with these such performances. So, all in all, it was good to be able to share my musical talents in such a way with others!

Anyway, these are the interesting happenings from this week - it was surely an interesting one. Thanks for the continued support that you all give me! I hope that you all have a good one!