Elder Cropper - June 17

this week was blahhhhh. Let me tell you why

Well actually it was really good to start but then it became horrible.

Monday:

Rocked it Pday and everything. Such a good day of work. We only work for 3 hours on pday and we walk everywhere but we had like 3 lessons two others and 1 with member plus we gave out two books. Bam! fullfilling weekly goals

Tuesday:

Tuesday another good day. normal day of work. We had 2 lessons with member and 3 lessons with Menos Activos. another good day of work.

Wednesday:

Another good day of work 3 other lessons and 2 lessons with Menos Activos difficult day elder powner and I had a good companionship inventory ill talk about it later

Thursday:

Not as good of a day. All of our scheduled lessons werent there except one. We taught 2 menos activos that day. We stopped by a sister in our ward who had fallen and broken here arm this last week. We stopped by to give her a blessing of health. Usually I anoint in Spanish and then Elder Powner blesses. However this time Elder Powner felt like I should give the blessing so he tricked me and minced the words in Spanish and said I would do the blessing and he would anoint. ( I don't really like that he tricked me but whatever) Anyways I didnt really have time to say no and I really felt like I should so while He was giving the annointing I was figuring out from my white missionary handbook (in spanish) how to actually give a blessing. In english its easy to do a blessing but in spanish when you give a blessing you have to use a whole different form to conjugate your words. The "tu" form as opposed to the "Usted" form. An example is "Te Bs\endigo" is "thou I bless" and "le bendigo" is "you I bless." We are supposed to use "thou" but its a form in Spanish I never ever use. So I just had faith that I needed to give the blessing, I said a prayer before I actually put my hands on her head and then I just did it. I have no idea what I said. I finished the blessing and it turns out she was crying. Elder Powner asked her why she was crying and she said she didnt know why she just felt the spirit really strong. I told her it was my first time giving a blessing in Spanish and she ahh that is why i am crying. It was an awesome experience and really was the highlight of my week. My week was going super good until Saturday but I'll talk about Saturday in a sec.

Friday:

Friday was super busy I got 3 letters from grandma! and a letter from Mom and Aunt Nancy. I read Aunt Nancy's last night and it really made me feel better because last night I was feeling pretty down I will tell you why (again) in a little bit. We had district meeting Friday which went really well. Elder Powner's best yet (don't worry I told him that) after that we had a meeting with our ward mission leader and then went out and did some work. We had to end the work early because we had a ward activity and then a song practice because we were going to sing in ward conference last Sunday. We basically worked for maybe 3 hours but we felt the effects. We had 1 lessons with a menos activo that day and nothing else besides contacts in the streets. Horrible day. We still hadn't had interchanges this friday night so Elder Powner called the other elders and asked them if we could change until Saturday night. I went to paies de gales (country of wales) ward for that Saturday but sadly without any stuff because we didnt have time to go get clothes or tolietries. Elder Powner asked me to sacrifice so I did but it sucked. I didn't shave for a whole 2 days so i looked grungy. That was the start of when things started getting bad.

Saturday:

I changed with Elder Coronado from Peru. He speaks very fast and isn't very helpful with people who are learning but whatever, I understood him. I do not work well with Elder Cornado because he's not loyal to president. The first thing he asked me Friday night after we changed was if I like president. I gave him a funny look and said of course. He told me he didn't like president because they have had some issues in the past. He told me that he had some pretty bad companions in the past which if that is the case you re supposed to report them to the president but Elder Coronado didn't do this he just tried to work it out with them. Then when he later had an interview with the president (during a regular interview) he told president why their area was struggling (because of his companion and how lazy he was) and president basically said that he was bad and was guilty for not reporting his companion. He also told him he wasn't obedient. Elder Coronado told me he just didn't care what he said. (stupid) He later asked me what I thought of the whole not going into a woman's house without a man rule. I asked him why and he said he didnt care about that rule and he gave me some example of when he was at a house and a woman stopped them because she needed help with something in her house but there wasn't a man there. He said he and his companion weighed the options of obeying the rule or giving service to this women and they decided it was better to give the women service. He then again asked me my opinion so I looked him in the eyes and said in my opnion it is always better to obey the rules. Then I told him that he could have just made a return appoitnment and then brought a man. Stupid elders. I hate it when elders are disobedient.

Sunday:

After we changed back Saturday night I asked Elder Powner how the day went and if we had success. He told me we were going to have 3 baptisms tomorrow (Sunday) but now we were only going to have 1. Diego (14 year old) didn't pass his interview Saturday and Jose ( the man I was going to baptize) had some dream that he told the elders about Saturday and this dream basically showed him getting baptized with his kids. Sooo he didnt get baptized either. Then Sunday our other lady who was going to get baptised didnt because she got sick.....ugh.....3 baptisms to 0. Frustrating.

All is good now though. today is pday and we had a zone activity which was fun. I have a picture from it. We just had a picnic. We have a big zone conference this week with president which will be fun. But I am excited for this week and ready to take out the trash.

I really don't have time, but basically my talk with Elder Powner was this: he told me the only reason he wanted to train was to better himself and not however he trained. So he doesnt care about my progresson. And then we learned from a question he asked me that I have no respect for him as a leader and I don't trust him. So I struggle with authority and he struggles with love. At least we know what we have to work on.

GOtta go love ya!

Elder Cropper