sammission: Another awesome week

Hey guys! It was another great week in the Utah Ogden mission. Every week seems to by so much faster. It still feels like December and yet, it's almost February. Holy crap, I just realized.. I'm approaching my sixth month mark. Wha?! I'm almost done with a quarter of my mission!

Elder Barnes and I thought up a trick to get rid of the treats we get from a lot of members efficiently. We have a freezer stocked up on treats that we never eat. Every time we open the freezer, we always feel bad because we kinda wasted their money so we devised a way to get rid of them without the guilt. We give them away to families that we teach or WML's family or bishop's family! The benefit is that we get an increase in member trust and we get more referrals out of it! :D

Day 1 (Tuesday, January 14) - Elder Sutton wanted to go to the temple but his companion, Elder Wikley didn't want to so Elder Sutton asked my companion, Elder Barnes to tag along with him. So for a little bit, I got to hang out with Elder Wilkey.

We went to a guy's house in the Tremonton South stake and his name was Alabe (pronounced Al-a-bee) Garze. Alabe is a stud! He has such an incredible conversion story and we got to barbeque some steaks. Alabe makes some mean steaks!

After pday was over, Elder Barnes and I got to go visit the Misrasi family. We got to teach the Restoration using Jenga! It's sorta like this but we do it a little bit different. The kids loved the lesson and they were able to understand what we were trying to teach.

Day 2 (Wednesday, January 15) - I got to do exchanges with Elder Sutton and that was a blast! We got to see Kevin who is going through a lot of challenges, all because he committed to baptism and started to come to church. (Matthew, your tip on this part is so spot on!) We decided to share Hebrew 12: 4-9, which is AWESOME! Read it! It's so good! Kevin understood it right away so it was awesome seeing far Kevin is progressing!

Elder Sutton and I also got to teach the Restoration with Jenga lesson with the Glover family! It was really awesome and Kylar (the 7 years old boy) wanted to buy the game afterwards because he really enjoyed playing the game! haha

That day, we were able to take the Strengths Quest assessment for Zone Conference (if you don't know Strenths Quest, look it up!) It basically assesses you and determines your top 5 strengths. Mine was Futuristic, Focus, Strategic, Significance, and Competition. All of the Elders who know me pretty well was surprised by HOW TRUE those strengths are for me. haha

Day 3 (Thursday, January 16) - After exchanging back to our companions, Elder Barnes and I got to go see Robert Hall! He is still on for February 8th! We got to read a little bit about the Book of Mormon and we also read the Testimony of Joseph Smith because Robert really likes personal stories and we thought it would be good for him!

We got to eat dinner with a family and they have a 17 years old boy who is having doubts about serving a mission and the parents wanted us to change that. We went over and ate delicious burgers! I still crave those burgers! They were so GOOD! Anyways, after dinner, we got to talk a little about missionary work and shared a video. It was a great dinner appointment and I still hope that boy decides to serve a mission!

Day 4 (Friday, January 17) - Not much happened that day. We had to clean our car for the inspection for Zone Conference which was yesterday. It was a disaster but now, it's clean! We had a couple lessons fall through but we got to help out a elderly couple put together four bookshelves! It was pretty interesting. The guy had a bunch of power tools so we were able to put it together pretty fast!

Day 5 (Saturday, January 18) - We had no appointments on that day so we made a bunch of visits and we got to see Tanya Upshaw. An unbaptized mother with two active kids who got baptized in 2012. We were talking and the kids started to talk about this thing they got for Christmas so we decided to go out and have a big snowball fight! It was awesome! After the snowball fight, we invited them to come to church and they accepted! It was awesome!

Day 6 (Sunday, January 19) - Elder Barnes and I were able to attend Ward Council and talk a little bit about Hastening the Work of Salvation! It was awesome!After that, we got to go to sacrament meeting with the Misrasi family! It was so much fun! Sacrament meeting went by super fast! Elder Barens and I were then supposed to teach Dylan (nonmember 16 years old guy) along with his Priests Quorum but Dylan didn't show up! :( But we taught the Priests Quorum on how to teach the Plan of Salvation.

We also got to see Ryan Kendrick that night and we had to push his baptismal date back to February 1st because he is going to be out of town on February 1st. So we have two strong awesome people getting baptized on February 8th! It is going to be a glorious day! I love it!

Day 7 (Monday, January 20) - Elder Barnes and I got to go to Zone Conference! We learned so much in Zone Conference and President Hiers spoke about the Atonement and it was MIND-BLOWING! He talked about the Atonement for about a hour and it was so awesome! My testimony of our Savior, Jesus Christ grew as a result from that lecture! It was amazing! Elder Barnes and I got to see the Misrasi and we got to teach them Word of Wisdom and keeping the Sabbath day holy! It was a cool lesson! :)

I love you all and have a great week! I love being a missionary! It has indeed been a great week to be a missionary in the Utah Ogden mission! Love, Elder McGrath