Eight Month Mark!!!

Elder Davies celebrated his 8 month mark this last week! Way to go Bryson (Elder Davies)! One third of the way! We love you!

Week Thirty Four!

Hola!

So this week was so much different! Ha joke. No it wasn't. Gotcha. Same old same old Arcadia Florida. We're really struggling with staying busy. Because there literally are times where there is absolutely nothing to do. We're discouraged from door knocking and that's the last thing we want to do anyways because that's what we did everyday for a whole month and absolutely nothing came from it. So that's a rough thing. WE're still like enjoying it and stuff, we just feel worthless a lot of the time and like we're wasting time because we can't do anything. Fun way to start out a letter!

Me and Elder McKenna are starting to do P90X from his ipod every other morning, so hopefully I can get back into some shape. I weighed myself at a grocery store the other day while we were posting up english class flyers and I haven't gained or lost a pound since I've been here! I think I've just converted muscle into fat. Lots of that southern food. The branch feeds us every now and then. Every week they get us a couple of big walmart bags full of food for all four of us so that ties us over for a while. We're doing well with food for sure. 

The weather here hasn't changed much. It rains like once a day for about half an hour or so. But when it rains it pours and you don't want to be outside when that happens. But not anything out of the norm. Yesterday in Sunday school the teacher talked about Mormon Helping Hands and how they're over in Colorado helping a lot....Me and E. Lids look at each other and say what happened in Colorado???...goes to show how much we find our about anything out here and to add onto it we're in Arcadia where people hardly even have tv's to watch the news!

Nothing crazy really went on this week. Nothing new. We'll see if we can't get our investigators progressing  more this week. And maybe find some new ones through referrals, not knocking. And there's just not really anything we can do with the members  either. Maybe try to stop by and see them and we ask for service every time, but nothing. And the english members don't know a single hispanic in the area, just hispanic areas that we already know. They don't intermingle here. Sad day.

Some cool thoughts from this past week from apostles. Elder Christoffersen, don't know if I already told you about this, but he said a lot of people focus on how the world's getting worse and worse and how it's going to get so dang horrible before Christ comes again. But the real matter is the world doesn't have to be wicked enough for Christ to come, it has to be righteous enough. The church is growing day by day very quickly and this is so the world is righteous enough when He does come. Adds more positivity to the end of the world. Nifty.

Live Hard,

Love Hard,

Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

MORE PICS of Elder Davies...

Here are a few more pics of Elder Davies (and others)...

Hope you enjoy?!?

First one - Elder Davies and Sister Beck

Second one - Elder Davies and Elder Liddle

Third one - The room

Fourth one - The Chapel

Fifth one - The most successful door knock of the week!

PICS of Elder Davies...

My Bad...we have received some pics of Elder Davies (and others). We just haven't posted them. Elder Davies emailed us this last week...and said...PLEASE could you post some pics. Yeah...may bad! Here are some cool pics of Elder Davies...

First one - Abi and Angie and Elder Davies

Second one - Two dudes on a bench

Third one - What missionaries look like behind closed doors

Fourth one - Brandon Guzman and Elder Davies

Fifth one - Elder Davies and his "3 Bros Away from Home"

Week Thirty Three!

Hola!

 

"Arcadia". Yep yep yep just truckin away here. Well actually just driving. Full Car. I'm gaining some poundage. But I've totally had severe diarrhea for like the last 4 days....so I lost quite a bit of the weight I was carrying around there! Maybe I could just do that everyday to lose weight...maybe make myself throw up too? That's not a bad thing is it?........

 

Oh...my guess...33-24 BYU.

 

I had my first dog attack this past week...probs one of the most traumatic experiences of my lifetime. I might've cried. NOT. But I did almost have a heart attack. We were just walking up to a guy outside his house and he just ran inside with his two dogs. Normal, most people run away from us. Then the front door to his house was left open and the two dogs come running out, Elder Lids says "Dogs are out", they skip him completely and run straight to me (figures) and one smaller one started jumping on me and a big fetching pit started going for my leg. I couldn't quite kick it in the face because the owner was right there, so I ever so gently....kicked it in the face, but it kept biting at my leg. Never punctured, just lightly bruised. Then the owner comes running up and screaming at them to get inside, cursing profusely as he does so. Yeah. Not fun.

 

Oh transfer calls were on Saturday. Came and gone. That was the four week transfer. This is the first week of this transfer now, back to six weeks like normal. The two ZL's we live with stayed the same, we obviously stayed the same. But we'll see what goes down in 6 weeks with all that jazz of change. But as for now still aqui. 

 

I talked with Elder James last night. He said the Crew isn't coming to church or letting them come over to teach them. That's just great. Happy news there. And he said Bradenton basically turned into what it's like here. Down to nothing really except trying to work off referrals that hardly come. 

 

We got stopped by a bearded lady in Walmart yesterday. Literally full grown hanging down beard. Basically an inch of dirt all over her body. She said she loved the "LDL" people. The "LDL" missionaries helped her find her old faith......I cried a little. 

 

Nothing much else going on here. Just trying to keep ourselves busy doing the work of Salvation. Pretty dificult right? 

 

Well have fun with this weeks activities! Football games, concerts, cougars oh my!

 

Live Hard,

Love Hard,

Laugh Hard,

 

Elder Bryson Davies

 

P.S. We're emailing today because the internet wasn't working in the church yesterday. Hopefully gets fixed by next week. 

Week Thirty Two!

Hola!

"Arcadia". Yep. Arcadia. That's all that's goin down here. Just hitting up the town of Arcadians.

This last week not much has really happened. Like almost literally nothing. We knocked for days. Literally everyday, basically every hour. It's great. That's why I'm getting super tan and blonde because we're constantly in the beating 100 degree sun! Sweating like pigs as well. People open their doors and see two sweaty dudes asking to share a message....eh we don't have the most success in the world. We had one lesson with each of the investigators this past week which was successful. They're all way cool and way nice. We have a good time with them as we teach them. It's crazy how I can understand basically everything now. 8 months ago I only knew hola! Times have changed definitely. I dream in Spanish a lot of times now too. And I think in Spanish a lot of the time, which is weird and kinda creepy. I just start thinking things and then I realize...I'm thinking in Spanish. WEIRD. I'll definitely want to continue learning it and using it when I get home. It's a useful language to know. All the people we talk with freak out when we say we've only been learning for a few months, and they've been here for 15 years and don't know any english. THE CHURCH IS TRUE!

Oh! I don't think I told you last week....BUT I, Elder Davies, totally did the Spanish translation of the entire Sacrament meeting last fast Sunday! Yep. This guy translated an entire meeting through a little microphone thingy to the headphones that the Spanish people were wearing. Usually a member guy does it, he served in Columbia and his wife is Columbian, so he's basically fluent, but I told him I could try, just to give him a break for a day, and I figured testimony meeting would be the easiest. It was SO HARD! But pretty awesome too. I had the biggest headache after the meeting from thinking and listening and talking in two different languages for a whole hour! I did everything from the announcements, the prayers, testimonies, sacrament prayers, all that jazz. It was way hard because you can't really think about what you're saying in Spanish because you have to still be listening to everything that's being said in English while you're translating the last sentence! Crazy stuff. Pretty cool though. Fun opportunity. 

So...That's about it. Still just livin the Arcadian lifestyle. This week we got....more knocking!

Good luck this week!

Live Hard,

Love Hard,

Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

Week Thirty One!

Hola!

First off, yep! It's Tuesday! We had to work yesterday because everyone had work off. It was a perfect day for us to go out and teach everyone! So P-Day got moved to today. It's way weird. It's always been on a Monday, I think even in the MTC?

So yeah it's Elder Michael Liddle from Doncaster, England. He is awesome. He says so many things differently. Everyday I learn a new way to say like 20 different things. And when we go shopping he has no idea what any of the brands or food here (the majority of them) even is. He's getting Spanish real well and he's way willing to do door approaches (since that's basically all we do here) which beats what I was! And he just wants to keep doing the right thing and stay busy so that makes me actually get up and do something and try to lead the way. It's pretty hard in an area I don't even know! But he's keeping me in line, even though it should be the other way.

But we live in a little duplex thingy next to a giant field with a bunch of cows. Yep. Arcadia. We always say Arcadia with the "Activia" yogurt tune after things happen that would only happen in Arcadia. And there are many things that would only happen here. It rains like on the daily right around like 2-3 ish and when it rains it pours! And it's like 100 degrees before and after the rain. Makes sense. So we're like sweating like crazy walking around and then we get completely soaked by rain, and then it turns blistering hot and the hoards of mosquitos come out and eat us alive. "Arcadia". 

We played on some see saws that are in a park right next to our house before walking around an entire neighborhood for 3 hours. We got some sweet burnage on our bodies. Totally gonna turn into a good lookin tan. 

So we were eating with some members this past week and they were telling us some fun facts about Desoto County and Arcadia. Desoto County is the like 2nd to the most poorest county in all of Florida (which is like 67 counties). And is like 3rd or 2nd worst like education results in all of Florida. Like test scores. Like there's a bunch of members that even graduated from the high school here, they can't read. "Arcadia".

We're constantly knocking and finding. All we do. The only people that are progressing are like two young people that aren't wanting to get baptized until after they're married which is in January. Most people are too nice to say no when we ask if they want to learn more so they set up another day, and then they just don't answer when we come again. That's what we had all this week. We had like 12 set appts. Like 1 and a half of them actually happened. The rest just looked through their blinds and saw us waving at them and didn't open the door.

Oh yeah thanks for the packages! And for the one from Brandon and Brooke too! THANKS! We've already gone through the hankies one time and we have to wash them on all of our meal breaks because we sweat and wipe ourselves so much. And yes the M and M's survived...just were kind of on BIG m and m!

Oh and I E. Liddle knows loads of Davies' in England. Our name's popular there.

Good luck this week!

Live Hard,
Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies