You can't prove what you saved yourself from

Hey! It was a good week. Cool stuff happened. I'm gonna tell you about it and there is nothing you can do to stop me.

As we were returning from exchanges last week, we saw what appeared to be a dairy in our area. This is exciting because diaries usually result in people to teach in Spanish. After a lot of asking we went out there and talked to the owner. 

It is in the Rupert Stake. His property line is the stake boundary. We felt pretty bad until he told us that there wasn't anyone to teach there anyway. Here are pictures from the dairy hunting excursion:

Later on in the week we were having dinner with a family in Springdale when we found out that they had invited a friend to dinner. She wasn't able to make it, but they told us that she had questions about the church and wanted to talk to missionaries! So we asked them if they could set up another time for us to meet with her and they are working on that right now. 

We had heard a lot about a young man. He has been coming to the YSA branch but he missed the two weeks we were there. We eventually just called him and asked if we could meet him. So we did. 

When we showed up at the house, there were a lot of people outside filling up a swimming pool with an irrigation pipe... with the kids in the pool. Needless to say it wasn't a very good place to have a spiritual discussion, so we asked him if he wanted to come over to the church building. After about 30 minutes of talking to him, we found out that he could recognize the spirit, knew the Book of Mormon was true, and wanted to be baptized.

So he will be baptized pretty soon. The timing isn't great because he is really busy with school and work, but he is about as close to ready as you can get.

We have been having a lot of success with teaching teenagers lately. 3 of the people we have taught and the referral in Springdale all are between 17-19 years old.

We haven't been able to meet with this one family in Albion for the past few weeks. The father works at the Normal College Campus, so we decided to just drive around over there and see if we could find him. We did! He offered to show us around the buildings while we talked to him. It is a pretty cool place. They use it as a haunted house and it is quite extensive. The guy who owns it is in the bishopric of the Albion ward and he offered to give our district a more complete tour next preparation day. Here are some of the pictures I got though:

Also, as we were leaving we drove past this guy struggling to get a goat though a gate. He was tugging on its horns as hard as he could, only moving it a few feet at a time. He eventually got it in there and slammed the gate closed. The goat, defeated, looked at us dramatically and bleated.

Why am I telling you about this? Because while he was doing it, this song had just come on in our car...

Les Misérables: 21- Building The Barricade

Legendary.

The other event that I was successfully able to push out of my mind until I had to think about it was our talks in the Albion ward on Sunday. It went well, I had some longer-than-comfortable (for me anyway) pauses while I tried to figure out where the quotes I was using were on my phone. Giving talks definitely gets easier over time. It was the third one I had given on my mission, but Elder Blashill hadn't given one since his farewell talk almost exactly a year earlier.

J. really loved the talks though. 

He said, "You boys had your personalities show up just perfectly in the talks..."

J. looks at me.

"The Student..."

J. looks at Elder Blashill.

"...and the Merrymaker!"

Elder Blashill and I were therefore witnesses to the first use of the word "merrymaker" since the times of Charles Dickens. 

Historic.

Also historic is the fact that it RAINED yesterday! There were only a few drops but it definitely was one of the highlights of the week. It hasn't rained here for a few months.

This Friday we will have a mission conference (the whole mission) and we will be visited by Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. We are all super excited about it!

The subject line came from the visit we had this week. We were talking about faith and the man explained that you can never know what didn't happen. If we heed prophetic warnings, if we follow the commandments, we will never know what would have happened if we didn't heed those warnings. His testimony came from a pattern of doing what he knew was right, and knowing that everything works out when he does. 

Alright, that is all I have for now! Love y'all!

-Elder Hazeslip

Bonus Pictures:

Q & A

1. Do you have any questions for me? 

I really can't think of any! We've been busy. Maybe just a fire update. There is a lot of smoke over here again. We know there was one in Grouse Creek and Hailey, but there could be more.

2. Do you need anything? 

I'm buying meds tomorrow. Also next week we will try to get a (invisalign) retainer made, it'll probably be more comfortable too. Idk what the cost will be.

3. Best day this week? 

Sunday was stressful, but it went by really fast. 

4. Best meal this week? 

We went to a cookout on Monday evening. Lots of good food there. Burgers, etc.

5. What did you learn this week? 

I really like the Mormon message "DiscoveringTruth". You should watch that one. I also learned (found out) that the Jacksonville ward is going to have sister missionaries. Elder Blashill has a friend who is serving in the ALRM and one of the sisters in her district is whitewashing there this week. So either the elders are out or they are going to have two sets like Cabot did.

LOVE YOU!!!