Week Twenty One!

Hola!

Okay...the meeting last night! None of our predictions came true...but it was still way spiritual! It's awesome to hear and watch Apostles and Prophets of God out here. It's like a boost of spirituality. That broadcast is exactly what every ward and branch needs to implement immediately. It stuck out a lot to me and Evans that they said that we as missionaries are here to assist the wards and branches with missionary work. They are supposed to be filling our planners with lessons and dates.

Oh...we set a date with Zamari and JJ!  Their date is the 7 of July! And their way super solid now and willing to follow all the commandments and make the changes so that's SWEET! So those will for sure happen. The Crew...it's pending. They didn't come to church yesterday so we're going to talk with them tonight to make sure they understand the importance and stuff of baptism and actually living the gospel and baptism's not the end, but the beginning! It's the door!

We had our last bye byes with President Summerhays. It was in the form of just a specialized training which included like two zones at a time and he just traveled on down through the mission. We had a tiny training and then a slide show of the mission and then a big Q and A thing with them both! That was pretty cool to do. Just get a lot more relaxed and ask questions about life, the gospel, their spirituality and stuff, oh and marriage! Yeah they gave us a lot of marriage advice! That was the part that everybody whipped out their notes for. And it was perfect worthwhile advice that I'm totally gonna follow! And so they leave next Monday and that's the day the new one starts! President Cusick (I think that's how you spell it) seems way cool. Pres. gave us a background on him and his family and stuff. Their kids are all grown up and moved out or on missions except their 15 year old daughter will be living with them. It'll be interesting! Hopefully a smooth transition. The assistants said that there's gonna be a ton of changes in the next few months, with how we do things and everything, but also with the technology! IPADS AND IPHONES! Ah man that's gonna be insane. We're excited for that. No more lugging around fifty pound backpacks with two sets of twenty pound scriptures and such. So they're doing two conference things next week on the 3 and the 4 I think, north and south, to meet the new Pres.

But everything else is good. It's hot like the dickens, but that's norms. Sweating like a hog is fun on the daily. Something I'm totally used to now! Constant wetness.

Oh! And we moved! Across the hallway....the other apartment was beyond disgusting so we had to move across the hall to a vacant apartment. But yeah our new apartment's the exact same, just not as disgusting and homier and has hardwood floors and painted walls and such. Good stuff. It's week 5 of the transfer! So two more weeks until transfer calls! Find out if I stay here or peace out!

That's all I got for now. Probs gonna think of more stuff later that I forgot. Normal.

Live Hard,
Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

Week Twenty!

Hola!

This past week has been pretty good. Hot but it's been car week so not bad at all! This week however....gonna be hard on bikes. But hey I'll lose the five pounds I gained last week. And more! We reset a baptism date for those girls we call The Crew! There's only three of them now that are actually progressing, Liz, Aide (who we call Bring-Bring), and Janet (who we call Sasha). 14, 17, 13. They are awesome! They've been coming to church and we've been reviewing the lessons with them so they actually understand everything. Their date is the 30 of June! And it's gonna happen for sure this time! We also found another group of three women/girls. It was a referral from a member, her daughter and two granddaughters. The daughter, or mom, has taken the discussions and everything a long time ago and thinks she knows everything we're going to tell her. And she says that we're closing our doors to people so they can't get to God by not allowing everyone to go into the Temple. One of her daughters, or granddaughters of the member, is 21 I think and the father of her baby just got killed, we think shot?, like three weeks ago and that's why she moved back here to her mom and little sister. So right now she's just mad at God and blames him for everything and doesn't get why bad things happen to good people like her and she says God has never given her a break in her entire life. Yeah....but the other sister, 16, is pretty solid and wants to learn more and will probably get baptized really easily! 

So this next Sunday is a broadcast of a meeting from the First Presidency! They're saying it'll be the most monumental impact or meeting or whatever on missionary work in the history of the church!!!! So all missionaries are required to go along with mission leaders, and members are invited as well. The meeting is titled "The Work of Salvation".

So last Monday we were eating at a members house and we were teaching them a short lesson afterwards. The wife is pregnant and she's due this week. So we finish the lesson and we get up after and tell them to call us to update us on their baby and when it comes. And then she tells us it might be coming tonight because she's been having contractions since we came over!! Me and Evans started freaking out! (horrible future husbands) But she told us she was fine because she had been, and I quote, "swallowing the contractions"...............what in the heck does SWALLOWING a baby contraction mean??? 

So yeah nothing else really going on differently here. We totally ate at Little Ceasars twice this last week so that was a wonderful Utah pasttime. We've been making Nitta Bar's for days. Elder Nitta invented them. Best thing of my life. Normal american tortilla. Peanut Butter on the tortilla. Blueberries everywhere, cut up strawberries everywhere, oatmeal or granola everywhere, (able to add nutella or banana if desired), roll up like a tight burrito. Eat. LOVE LIFE. It's pretty amazing and wonderful. Make it. Love it. 
Nitta Bar. 

Live Hard,
Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

Week Nineteen!

Hola!

What the flippin Taiwan?!? That's basically like the coolest thing ever in the world. Basically. Hey I had tripe last week too! It was pig stomach though. Nasty texture like chewing on rubber! Cool fun stuff. We eat a lot of weird things here too and it's the same thing where we just have to eat everything! Can't say no to anything and have to eat ten and a half plates of it. Or we just go to Hungry Howie's (pizza buffet place, the place everybody goes to) and we just eat pizza for days and get fat on purpose.

Welcome to the life of not understanding everything and being a total minority! Fun right? It's a humbler that's for sure. Except you guys don't have to be expected to speak the language! Lucky ducks.

Tropical storm for days down here in the boonies! Nice. Did you know they can't have basements where I'm at because like 12 feet underground is water?? Fun fact. But yeah it rained for days here. Thursday we couldn't leave our apartment....ALL DAY LONG. We had to stay in and do NOTHING because of the tornado warnings and flooding warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings that were happening all day. There was a couple tornadoes that touched down but like an hour away from us was the closest one. Our whole mission was on lockdown in our apartments. We were so bored! The weather radio we have would go off like a siren every like half an hour when another update came in on the tornadoes. But here in Bradenton it just rained and poured all day. We've been caught in like a five minute storm every now and then on our bikes, which means we got completely soaked and then the sun came out and we just sat in our wetness for the rest of the day. FLORIDA! And you guys get to experience the weather aspect too over yonder in Taiwan!

That's way sweet you guys get to talk to the missionaries yonder. They probably love you guys! It's always a relief to talk to somebody that's just solid in the church and has no problems with it....I have yet to experience that, but I'd imagine it'd be pretty cool!

The work is slowing down...a lot. We had to drop three baptisms that were this Saturday because they didn't come to church. We're really just trying to make progress with the people we have and our recent converts so they stay active and finding new people. Every week we have about 95% or whatever attendance of recent converts which is good! Me and Evans are getting along way good! No problems so far and he's chill enough to not ever have a problem with anything.

Oh I saw Casey last week! He came to pick up his bike and drop off Evans'. Talked for a little bit. He's up yonder in Tampa doing that ZL thingy. He says it's good, not as awesome as this area!

So....don't really know what else to talk about...life's just the same! Getting hotter and wetter! SWEET BEANS!

Live Hard,
Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

Week Eighteen!

Hola!

Well Casey's gone and Evan's is in! And I'm in charge of my area!!! Stressful. But it's chill. E. Evans is a boss. He's just my comp now, not trainer or anything. I don't even know if they do senior and jr comps out here? He's been out for little over a year. His spanish is pretty good. We're actually almost on the same level as talking, but the difference is he can understand absolutely everything anyone says. yeah I still can't but whatevs. We drove up to Tampa on Tuesday to make the trade with Casey and Evans. Wasn't too hard because I'll see Casey quite a few more times at conferences and such especially since the new Mission Pres. is coming in in like a month. That'll be pretty crazy. We have 7 missionaries just in our tiny little branch. That's a lot! But at least they took Sarasota so we don't have to travel all the way down there, since we only did it like once a week anyways. But yeah Evans is cool. He's crazy insane in a good way. Loves sports and superheroes. And eating. He lives in Riverton and he's 21 right now. He's a hard worker which is nice, I just have to make sure I stay a hard worker since I'm basically in charge of every single decision of the day for these first few weeks!

But this past week has been good. We have some potentials for baptism for next Saturday (15th) from those girls we call "The Crew". So we'll see how that goes!

That's crazy about Cameron getting baptized. I didn't know he was that old! Yeah I've seen a couple kids get baptized, but it seems more normal for me out here right now to see an older person get baptized, I forget sometimes that 8 year olds can get baptized too! Ha...weird. Pretty nifty how the whole family could be there too. Sweet stuff the gospel does with families yeah??

That is crazy about Brother Peterson??? I totally learned from him like every week. We just got a referral for a non member who's a daughter of a member and her husband just passed away like 2 weeks ago and she's young and has a couple of kids. So here we come to help! It's at those times when people especially need the gospel in their lives! Because how depressing would it be to only think that they're just gone? Bye bye. That's it. Solid black for eternity. THAT WOULD NOT BE COOL. So we spread that to everybody here that there IS a life after this one! Obviously! It's way comforting.

TAIWAN!! That's so cool! Dang lucky you guys are! That'll be sweet to get pics and stuff from you guys! Good luck with that! I am definitely gonna send off those prayers and whatnot for ya'll. It'll be good!

Well not too much happened this past week besides making the switch and showing Evans around and teaching lessons and graduations.

Live Hard,
Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies