Week Thirty Five!

Hola!

Yep. Still here! We had Stake Priesthood meeting last night. It was cool to see a ton of priesthood holders in one room! I haven't seen that many on my mission! Filled the whole chapel and overflow of a real normal sized chapel! And I got to see the Santos! And a bunch of other members of the Spanish Bradenton Branch. That was pretty cool stuff.
 
We had a zone conference this last Thursday with Elder Teh from the Seventy! He came and trained us for a few hours along with President and Sis. Cusick. It was basically one of the most spiritually edifying times of my life. Elder Teh talked to us about how any meeting we have in the church, or it could even be any study time, can be a revelatory experience (quoting Elder Bednar). We just need to do our part to invite the Spirit. So....DO THAT WITH CONFERENCE. Prepare yourself spiritually and physically for conference. Go into with questions in mind, spiritual or temporal, and if your ears are "tuned in" you will receive your answer. Take notes on what the speakers say, but not only the words said, but the things said to YOU in your heart and mind by the Spirit. We need to be attentive and listening to the words, AND the thoughts and write that revelation down and ACT upon what we receive. The words of our prophets are exactly what God and Jesus Christ desire to be said, and they are perfectly given and presented to help us in our lives physically, temporally, and spiritually.

Just some thoughts. Cool conference though!

Besides that nothing really happened this last week...Still struggling to stay busy with productive things. It's awesome to realize what I'm a part of! Behold, a royal army!

Live Hard,
Love Hard,
Laugh Hard,

Elder Bryson Davies

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