Week 57

We had a great week this week! 

Monday we organized a zone activity to head out to La Unión and had tons of fun going around this beach town. We grew a lot closer as a zone and now everyone is comfortable around each other and we are all good friends. 

Tuesday I went over to the area Oriental 2 on divisions with Elder Coc. (a missionary who has about 3 weeks left in his mission.) It was really cool- I was able to have 2 awesome baptismal interviews and then go out and work with him all day. Although he is ready to go home, he is still an awesome elder (highest baptizer in the mission right now) and I learned a lot about being direct with the people from him. Then we finished off the day sleeping in his air conditioned house! It felt like I was in heaven with that cool air blowing in!!

Wednesday and Thursday we had 2 normal days of work and found some good new people. We have some good investigators right now, but they all have little problems like not being able to give up drinking, having to work Sundays, etc. so we are trying to find some new people to baptize in September. 

Friday the asistants to the president wanted to do divisions with us and one of them insisted that they wanted to see how I work in my own area. I was a little nervous because I thought I barley knew the area, but in the end we only ended up getting lost once:) Overall it was a really good day!

Saturday was insane! We ended the divisions with the assistants at 6:30 am and then a million things had to get done. Then the stake president calls us and tells us he will be at our house in 15 minutes and he wants us to meet his grandson. He shows up and we go outside to meet him, but then he just invited himself and his grandson into our house. He looks at me and my companion and says that he wants us to teach his grandson the gospel and then help him with english homework. So we taught him a lesson and it all went well, but then all the missionaries in the zone started showing up for all the things they needed from us and the stake president just kept inviting everyone into our house. Pretty soon we had 14 people in our tiny house and we were running around trying to get them all what they need while doing English homework and answering all the stake presidents questions about the plan we had presented to him last week. It was a madhouse. haha 

We finally got everyone out and then we had to run to the bus stop and take an hour and a half bus ride to get baptismal clothes that some elders would need the next day. We got back just in time to got to our correlation meeting with our ward mission leader, eat a quick dinner from the young single adults fundraiser and go home for the night. 

Sunday morning the bishop called asking if Icould give a talk. I think it went well despite the 15 minute heads up haha. After church and lunch we went out to work and decided to head to a decently far away part of our area. We got into our first investigators house and before we sat down the stake president was calling us yet again. He told us he wanted us in a meeting with all the bishoprics in 20 minutes in the stake center. Once again we ran to the bus stop and got to the meeting a little late... we felt dumb because everyone was already sitting down waiting for us, but he could have given us a bigger heads up. That meeting took up pretty much the entire afternoon and we ended up only getting in 1 lesson Sunday, but it was still a good day. 

Overall it was a crazy week, but we had fun the entire time. I'm getting along great with my comp. We are constantly laughing and learning and quoting movies, etc. 

Everything is going awesome! Hope you guys are doing great. Thanks for everything. 

Elder Davis

Week 56 Slow and Steady

We had a great week this week! 

Monday and Tuesday I wasn't permitted to leave the house, but Wednesday I got half a day of work in. Then Thursday we had a super sick Multi-zone meeting! 

It was so awesome and spiritual! We learned a ton and already have seen the fruits of putting what we learned in practice. My mission president is the best! He brings such a strong spirit and is turning everything around in this mission. Everyone is increasing their faith and so far as a mission we have had almost double the baptisms that we had by this point last year. It is awesome to see how the Lord is pushing his work forward. 

Then we went to a meeting with the stake president and our mission president. We presented new plans to focus the stake on preforming priesthood ordinances. We based everything on D&C 84: 19-22 and talked about how important it is to use the priesthood that has been restored. What good does it do to hold this authority from God if we never use it? We are now collecting reports weekly from every ward to see what ordinances they did in their ward that week and if they are truly magnifying the priesthood God has given to us... It's super awesome and everyone is excited for it. The goal is that more fathers will give blessings to their children and wives, more members will work in missionary work with the goal of baptizing their own friends and families, and increasing the number of people taking the sacrament every week. We are super excited, and think this will help our stake grow!

Friday we headed out super early to San Salvador to get my visa updated. Then we got Taco Bell!!! Oh it was so delicious! It was kinda funny because someone was having a baby shower in Taco Bell. haha  Then we headed home and got to work. It was my first complete day working and it felt awesome! We got a lot done and Friday and Saturday and I feel so much better getting out and actually doing something. Since Thursday my health hasn't given me any problems and I feel awesome! 

Sunday was awesome! Probably the most special part of my week was Sunday night. We finally were able to go and visit the Bishop. I got to know him and his family and at the end of the visit we asked him to give us blessings. It was a really neat experience. Even though he barley knows me, he gave me a super spiritual, very personal blessing. It was just what I needed and we felt the spirit so strong as he gave it. 

Overall it was an awesome week! I'm having tons of fun with my comp- just making jokes, singing songs, and quoting movies! 

Hope you are all doing great.

Love Elder Davis

Week 55 Interesting Week

So this week was real interesting.... 

To explain I'm going to have to jump back a bit though. So last Sunday after church I felt terrible. I wasn't able to go out to work. Monday I made it to the stake center, wrote home and then slept. Tuesday I went to get some exams done in a clinic in Jiquilisco and everything looked OK, but I still felt terrible and hardly got out of bed all day. My companion actually helped me out a ton and packed for me because I wasn't physically up to it. Wednesday I got the zone leaders to send the bus right in front of my house to go to San Salvador for the changes meeting. We loaded up the bags and headed out. It stunk because I wasn't able to say goodbye to anyone in my old area, but I was excited for the changes. 

So at the change meeting I got to say hi and goodbye to some really good friends, so that was awesome.  I got assigned to go to San Miguel with Elder Kauvaka as a zone leader. So that was awesome. I was really pumped because Elder Kauvaka and I are already good friends and he is an awesome elder, so I think this will be an awesome change!!  

Then we loaded up the bus and started the 3 and a half hour bus ride back to San Miguel. On the bus I tried to get to know the missionaries in my zone a little, but then almost passed out and decided it was time to sit down. We got to the stake center and I couldn't walk to the house so we got a taxi and I just went inside and crashed for 2 hours. Then I woke up and vomited uncontrollably for about 20 minutes and decided it was time to call the doctor. We met the doctor in the hospital (side note: the Lord is so smart. He sent me to the area that has the best hospital on this side of the country 2 minutes from my house! Got to love revelation) and the minute he saw me, he told me I wasn't leaving that night. I had yellow eyes and yellow skin on top of like 10 other symptoms so things were pretty bad. 

The doctor started signing me up for a ton of tests and not everything turned out good and to make a long story short I spent Wednesday afternoon until Sunday afternoon in the hospital:) 

But it wasn't all bad- some funny things happened that left my comp and I cracking up...

Funny hospital stories:

1. The night nurses are inept and dropped my IV like 4 times

2. We tried teaching a gay nurse the first lesson

3. They left a brand new nurse to give me shots one day and she literally read the instructions off the package of the syringe to give them to me 

4. At one point I had 2 IV's coming out of both hands (4 in total), the machine for one of them kept beeping like crazy but the doctor wasn't there and the nurses didn't know what to do so they just kept pressing the "silence" button. I fell asleep and woke up an hour later with my hand the size of an elephant! All the fluids they thought they were pumping through my veins were just in my hand... that felt just amazing... but turned out for some funny pics (on my comps camera-  I'll send them next week) 

So yeah... a lot more stuff went down but I can't remember everything right now. 

I basically feel good right now. I am on a ton of meds and am not allowed to work for a few more days but I am doing a ton better. Super pumped to be in this area and zone! My comp and I have so many ideas we passed back and forth while in the hospital and we are just super pumped to get working! Cant wait to get back on the street!! 

Thanks for everything. Hope you have a great week!  

love Elder Davis

Week 54

Another good week...

It passed by so fast I'm not even sure what happened. 

-I went on divisions twice

- Did 3 baptisimal interviews 

-We found a lot of new investigators. 

-We dropped a lot of investigators.

-My comp and I had a competition to see who could give out the most copies of the BOM... he won but only because I wasn't in the area 2 of the 6 days. 

- I started collecting quarters from every state 

-we went to members houses looking for food because we were completely out of money to finish of the month thanks to hospital bills. hahaha Good thing the members like us!

Yeah that's pretty much all I got. Oh yeah and they just called to tell me I'm going to have changes Wednesday! Hopefully I get a good area and comp!!! 

Super pumped that Nicole had her baby!!!!!!! Hope everything is going well back home.

Love,

Elder Davis