Week Thirty!

Hola!

This is Elder Davies in Arcadia, Florida! Yep I am in Arcadia. The smallest town I've ever laid my eyes and ears upon. Picture the scene in Monsters Inc when they say "mama there's another gator in the house" "another gator?? boy get me that shovel!"......Arcadia. In a nutshell. Good people! The members of the branch here (all 35 of them) are way nice and humble, most humble and nice you'll meet! There's like 5 Spanish members that are active right now in the branch that get a translation during the English services. And then we have gospel principles class in Spanish. Then they just leave because the third hour's in english just with all of the priesthood together. There's one young man and one young woman. Like 7 or 8 primary kids. It's fun! Sunday was funny. The way they do things and everything. The stake president was there and he's like "we just don't have this much fun in the big wards." It's very true. We live with the two English Zone Leaders for this area. Elder Kenyon from Washington and Elder McKenna from Farmington, UT. They're way awesome and fun so living with them is fun. We're still in the Bradenton Stake so no change there. 

Oh! so my companion is Elder Liddle! And guess where he's from? Oh just over there across the sea from a little place called Doncaster, ENGLAND. Yep! My companion is a blonde Englishman! Born and bred! Sweet thick English accent. Says things that we would never say here. Good stuff! And I get to teach him how to speak Spanish with an English accent! It's fun. He's so awesome. He's 20 years old. Should have pics next week of everything. Being a trainer is fun. I was definitely blessed to be put in the house of two zone leaders because they know what they're doing so if I ever have questions I can ask them. 

Right now we're starting from literally ground zero in this area. It just opened up for English like 6 months ago after not having missionaries here for 2 years. And now we're the first Spanish missionaries here in like 3 years! So we started off with two investigators from the zl's because they could barely teach them because they only speak spanish. So we're doing a lot of knocking. A LOT. We spent a whole day this last week just walking around and hitting up every road we could in a small area looking for Hispanic houses. Lot harder than it sounds. But it's all good. We're staying busy with that. We're going to start an English class on Wednesday and a lot of members told us that's a good idea...so we'll see! Oh we're on full car here too! Sweet relief! Nice car too. Brand new Ford Fusion. Sweet doggies. Our area's ginormous. The zl's told us that we'll most likely never leave it if we get lost. They said if you are driving and you see nothing but cow pastures for about twenty minutes, then you should probably turn around. Arcadia! It's definitely a different experience. Tons and tons and tons of trailer parks and mobile homes and what nots. 

Address:

304 Providence St.

Arcadia, FL 34266

Elder Christofferson came to a Stake Conference on Sunday! But it was for the stake above us...And the zone leaders got to go to it and a personal training with him for all the zone leaders of the mission! Freakin lucky. They told us it was insane. They were basically in the presence of an apostle all day. 

Anyways...that's about it!

Have a good week this week! I better have like 5 nephews or nieces when I come home! I'm getting very brown from being constantly walking in the sun! Elder Liddle's getting very red!

Live Hard,

Love Hard,

Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies 

Week Twenty Nine!

Hola! 

So yesterday was awesome! The sisters from Sarasota had a baptism of a dad in a nonmember family who I taught back when Casey was here! He's been being taught for a long time. The sisters got them! The husband at least. So that was way cool to finally see. And ya know Jr. Santos? Yeah...I gave him the Aaronic Priesthood yesterday!!!!!!! He came out of his interview with Presidente and was like alright I guess you gonna give me the priesthood now...??? And we did it in front of the entire priesthood in opening exercises. It was in english so it wasn't incredibly difficult...sweet experience!

Not much else has happened this week.....Oh! I finally gave a testimony in church yesterday. First time I've gone up to the pulpit and spoken Spanish so far in my mission. I lasted like 7 months without having to. Oh yeah on the 23 it's my "7 month" mark! Technically according to days. But really technically according to transfers I'm at 7 and a half months right now! Crazy...Oh so I gave my testimony because it was my DEPARTING TESTIMONY!!!!!!! YEP THIS ELDER'S BEING TRANSFERRED!!!!!!!!!!! 

We got our calls on Saturday morning. President Cusick called so we knew it was transfer. And then that's all he said and he didn't tell James who he's getting....we were like that's weird...but then Pres. calls back and tells James he's going to have the opportunity to train! So on Tuesday we go to Tampa to get his trainee and it's weirdly different this time. Pres switched it up so EVERY missionary that's even only getting transferred has NO idea where they're going or who they're going to be with. So EVERY missionary that is getting transferred goes to a huge meeting on Tuesday and they'll be assigned then to their various areas. We don't really know why they're doing it that way..maybe it makes sense to them and we just don't get the big picture. So we'll go to the meeting at 11 on Tuesday in Tampa and get assigned to our areas and then right after we'll both pick up our trainees. Oh did I say we?? Because I meant....we. I am training! Yeah when pres. called he said he had two items of business for me, one that I would be getting transferred out of the area, and two that I would be training! So yeah Elder Davies is going to be training a new missionary for at least 12 weeks. But the thing is I really don't find out where I'm training him until Tuesday, which is weird...There are rumors of like 5 new areas opening up so the chances of me opening one of those areas is pretty high. Training. New area. Bring it. Should be interesting! Pres. made sure to get it in our minds, and he will again on Tuesday I'm sure, that being a trainer is one of the most important jobs there is. He says in level of importance it goes President of the mission, trainers, trainees, ap's, zone leaders, and district leaders. He told us to make sure we realize the responsibility we're taking on ourselves and how impactful it is to be a trainer. He told us how there are family members at home that have been praying that their son gets a good trainer........NO PRESSURE! Nah but it should be fun! I'm excited. I'm kinda one of those people that doesn't get overly excited about things or nervous, just kinda go with the flow. James will be training here in Bradenton. 

But yep yep besides that nothing much been going down! Just saying bye to basically everybody here, but again, not the kind of person that gets overly emotional, so I'm just like whatever and people are like are you even sad to leave?? And I'm like yeah! I just don't let it dominate me ya know? Society man. 

Oh and James is basically all better.....the stitches are out...kind of because he took them out himself with some scissors....

Have a good week! 

Live Hard,

Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

Week Twenty Eight!

Hola!

So this last week has been pretty crazy.

Monday: P-Day played flag football and ultimate with the zone. Did it barefoot (horrible idea) and got some mondo cuts and such on my feet. And it was like a billion degrees outside and I was sweating like a pig. Oh and my big toe nail fell off. Okay actually I pulled it off after the game. Grossness.

Tuesday: Zone conference with like almost all of the south of the mission together with Pres. Cusick down in Port Charlotte. That was way cool. Lots of talk of the changes in our mission, new upcoming things, rules, etc. We talked a lot about our calling and the responsibility that comes with it and if we are willing to accept that. If not then he invited us to talk with him. Pretty cool though. Learned a lot on how to better ourselves.
 

Wednesday: We did an exchange and I went with Elder Buck and his comp Elder Vanderpool came here with James. They had a crazy good day here, solid like 5 lessons and got 2 new investigators. Me and Buck went and visited a few people. A reverend of black church that told us about all of the murders in our area in the last few weeks. That was fun. We taught an ex-gang leader of a Satan worshiping group. That was...awkward. And had dinner with some Tongans, which was way tasty.

Thursday: Elder Buck volunteers to make me pancakes in the morning. As he's making them he gets a call from Elder Vanderpool. Hangs up all calm and tells me "uhh your companion's in the hospital." The first thing that ran through my head was what did they do within the hour of being awake that would make him go to the hospital? Found out that a mirror attacked him....We had a mirror in our shower that me and Evans put in there that was set up on a towel rack inside of the shower. It was basically immovable unless you tried to push it with some serious force. But James was just getting out of the shower and somehow it fell directly onto him and shattered into a billion pieces. One piece sliced his arm wide open on his upper arm and another piece fell and sliced open his left big toe. He opens the door and Vanderpool's like you okay? I'll call 911. So he called, gave him a blessing, and they came and picked him up and took him and Vanderpool was left in the apartment alone and that's when he called me and Buck. So Vanderpool had nobody with him and had the car but he had lost his license like the week before so he couldn't drive it. Me and Buck didn't have the car, and the other elders that did had hit a raccoon the night before and put it in the shop to get the bumper fixed. So we had absolutely no transportation. so we called english members for like 45 minutes and nobody answered. So Vanderpool has to call a spanish member that hardly speaks english to come get him and we had to call some youth spanish members to come get me and Buck. Finally get to the hospital and James is getting his arm and toe cleaned and numbed up. And from then on we watched the entire thing! Probably the most disgusting two and a half hours of my life. It was like watching a real life Saw movie. Opening flaps of skin on his arm and seeing his muscle. Watching it get sewed up like Frankenstein. And now we're probably gonna be on car again this week because he can't really do anything with his right arm and left foot. Later that night we got a call that cleaning checks on the apartment was gonna be the next day. Figures. So I had to clean the whole house, clean up all the blood that spilled everywhere (it looked like we had murdered somebody) and clean up all the glass in the bathroom. FUN STUFF. Oh and we got switched to twin beds and got another couch in our tiny apartment. I miss my queen size.

Friday: Didn't do much because James was basically dead. The docs never gave him medicine so all he's taking is the occasional tylenol. We had a branch missionary fireside/activity thing that the WML put together. Only 4 families showed up and they were the already solid families. So we watched a talk by Pres. Eyring from the last conference and sang a few songs and ate the food and left.
 

Saturday: We had a pretty good day. Taught a few lessons. Got two new investigators. We blessed our house finally. Never did that after we moved. There was some creepy stuff happening in our house, mirrors attacking, random claps in the middle of the night.

Sunday: Church was good. Had a good lesson with Neftaly last night.

So that's been the last week.

Enjoy the last week of summer! I know I will!
 

Transfer calls on Saturday!

Live Hard,

Love Hard,

Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

Week Twenty Seven!

Hola!

What up in the U...T...A...H?? This be the Elder Davies guy out here in Bradenton, FL. 

This last week a major topic with our recent converts (because we didn't have a single lesson with an investigator). We talked a lot about the importance of the sincerity of our prayers, and the faith behind them that they will be fulfilled in the Lord's time according to His will. And when something happens that might seem is the opposite of what we've been praying for we can't just say "Well God didn't care about or hear my prayer so I'm mad at Him". No. That's the worst thing we could do. People are always so easy to say yes everything's according to His will and His time, but when that faith gets tested they just crumble and blame God. It's so important to always know that whatever happens is happening for a reason and what happens could be according to our prayers and our faith. We need to see the positive side of things. Instead of "Ugh this happened I'm so mad" we need to ask "Okay why did this happen and what does the Lord want me to do with it". And that leads into more prayer and study in the scriptures and words of the prophets! Having that understanding relationship with our Father in Heaven is insanely important. He truly is our Father and He loves us and we need to love Him and respect and learn from all He does for us. Prayer is a gift and a privilege and has real power. The sooner we learn that and make it a habit in everything we do, the better off we will be and the easier it will be to instantly accept everything that happens in our lives or to just better understand it as well.

So there's that little sermon! Antyways....we went to a MLB game!!!! That was insanely awesome! got some sweet pics don't worry. And like everybody was there! Probably like 90% of our mission was sitting in the same section with the members that brought them so we were easy for everyone to pick out. And missionaries sang the national anthem so the entire stadium totally knew we were there! It was so sweet. Huge indoor stadium. It's only like 30 minutes away from where we live right now so the drive wasn't bad at all. Jazmin and Nora Carlos gave us a ride (have I talked about them before? They're basically some of our best friends here. Awesome members.) And Neftaly came with us because we needed a guy in the car! We went over the Sky Bridge there and on the way back. Sweet bridge. We stayed at the game until the middle of the ninth inning then we had to leave because we had to be home by 11. Elder Casey was there, Evans was there, Booth was there so there was A LOT of catching up with everybody. That was such a fun night! Oh! And I finally got to see Hermana Russell! Remember Jessy Russell? She's the girl that got called to the exact same mission as me like a few months after I got mine? Pretty cool to see her and talk with her! I've known her since Jr. High! Fun to see friendly faces.

I am here for at least two more weeks. Transfer calls are in two Saturdays. The next transfer is the one that's only 4 weeks long. So yeah still chillin' in Bradenton for now. 

Live Hard,
Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

Week Twenty Six!

Hola!
 
Tuesday I went on an exchange with Elder Tueller (zone leader) down in Sarasota. SO FUN! Finally got to meet all new people and a new area I've never worked in. Oh it was nice. We taught a Hindu indian woman and she told me how to get rid of a stomach ache by pinching my hand in a certain spot. Then we taught a lady who was baptized in December and is crazy in love with the church. Her husband was in Newsies! He's the guy in the boxing scene that gets punched in the face! Cool stuff. And then the next morning we went and did a quick lesson 1 with some new investigators for them and set two baptism dates!

Then we started teaching some new people! One is a cousin of Alex and Neftaly. We taught him lessons 1 and 2 so far. he likes them and says they just make sense. Then there is Esmerelda and she has like 5 little siblings and just her mom. So we're going to try to get the whole family into it and that would be so nice to add another huge family with tons of little kids and youth to the branch! So we're working with them, and they love us, who wouldn't?, so they always want us to come back. (P.S. I learned with them that throwing a kitchen knife into a tree is actually really simple).

But then Saturday came. We went to a party at Myakka state park down in Sarasota. Sweet park! Totally forgot my camera! LAME. But they had a ton of food, two giant blow up water slide things for all the kids and a bounce house and blasting music, and we played soccer! First time on my mission playing soccer with Hispanics! It was fetching intense. First time I've like ever actually played a real game of soccer. I totally did awesome. And sweated beyond compare and got a sick awesome burn/tan! Way way fun to play with all older men that want to relive their glory days and the little kids who are as good as the pros.

But yeah that's about all that's happened this week! Keep up the awesomeness and spirituality of awesomeness! Good luck this week!

Live Hard,
Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies