We had "Zone Conference" this week, but it was over zoom, so it didn't really feel like zone conference. But it did allow for something cool to happen! Brad Wilcox joined our zoom meeting and spoke to our mission for about 45 minutes. It was pretty cool, he spoke a lot about studies and journaling. He seems super happy most of the time, but as I've noticed with most personal interactions with church authorities, he roasted all of us lol.
That same day, we were at Kimball Park sending messages to people. We were in our suits, and so a black lady named Chenese came up to us and asked if we were the Elders for the Mormon church! She had been taught by the missionaries about 8 years ago, but lost contact with them. She is homeless right now, but I can tell that she won't be for long. She's very with it. We shared a quick message about prayer with her and are meeting with her again soon. These "coincidental" interactions are always some of the coolest.
A lot of missionaries are leaving this week to their original assignments in other countries, including Elder Torman (an Elder in my district) and Elder Poulson, the Zone leader I served with in the valley. He's a stud, I'm gonna miss him haha. I included a pic of us back in the Valley when we went to the border. There's also some pics from the zoo trip last week.
The mission is going to get a lot smaller in like the next week, and the mission is super young. In a transfer or two, I'll be considered one of the "older" missionaries. Crazy! Elder Mason was supposed to leave for Guatemala, his original assignment, on February 1st, but some of his paper work got lost a while back. So we've been working on "deporting" him, as we like to say lol. Transfers are coming up in a few weeks, so we will see what happens to my companions, I think I'll stay here though.
I've been trying to help my companions get more confident with speaking Spanish. They are afraid of messing up to the point where they won't speak much. I've forced them to lead lessons and street contacts so they can improve haha. Many times it goes horribly and there's a lot of awkward silence, bad grammar and slow sentences, but that's how you learn! It was the same for me when I was still figuring things out. They're both doing well though.
Well I hope everyone has a good week! Super bowl must be coming up soon right? I miss football haha
Nos vemos!
Elder Pettit
