Out 5 Months on Feb 14, 2012

Been an ok week this week. My ear hasn’t been really giving me any trouble cept a little bit yesterday, but it still rings and is unpleasant. Got a doc appointment tomorrow and we'll hopefully find out what it is. Kinda tired of this constant ringing.

Struggling a bit with my new companion. Elder Cronin’s a good guy and a pretty hard worker, but there are things that I don’t like. We play card games every night after we're done planning and all that, but he always cheats and coming from my gaming background, that annoys me. I think he's also pretty inconsiderate. Today we're playing golf for p-day and he set it all up. I don’t really mind playing golf, but he set it up w/o asking me about what I wanted to do. It just seems a lot of the time he just wants to do things his way and for his own benefit. He’s probably my least favorite companion so far.

Cool experience though. Well, a couple of them, but we had Elder Ballard come and talk with the mission! He’s here reorganizing a stake and he took some time to talk with the missionaries. He really stressed the importance of companions and being the best teachers there are. He’s pretty funny too. I think in such a small low-key gathering he can afford to let some humor out. That makes 3 apostles I’ve seen/heard in person. Elder Gavarett of the Seventy is gonna be coming to our stake at the end of the month to reorganize our stake and he's having a new member meeting with us and the people we're working with. That should be cool too.

Had the opportunity to give another blessing this week too. I’m pretty amazed with some of the less actives in this area. There’s one guy who's a pretty rough guy. Been to prison at least once, tough looking, and pretty rough in his speech, but he said he's been having a rough time and hasn’t felt the Spirit for at least 3 weeks and wants it back. He has a strong testimony and when you see a rough and tough guy like him cry, it's something else. There was another less active we met who's a convert, and we always like to ask about their conversion story and how and why they embraced the gospel. Well she was telling us her story and she started crying too and said she couldn’t deny the church. These people do have testimonies, maybe small ones, but they are there and it makes me wonder why they don’t come to church.

It was fun staying in a ward for more than 6 weeks. On Sunday when we greeted it was fun to see all the people I knew. Spent 6 weeks getting to know these people and I get to stay and spend more time with them. I’ve had a lot of fun with this ward. we changed up our wards again, but I got to keep the ward I had most fun in. we rode our bikes to Notus 10 miles away, did skits in mutual and ward functions, got shocked by an electric fence at a dinner appointment, and I think I’ve been more open with people and I’ve gotten to know them better and they've gotten to know me better. It’s been a lot of fun. We’ve built a lot of member trust in the ward. Hasn’t paid off yet, but we're still working it.

5 months tomorrow! Crazy how fast it's gone. I'll hit my 6 month mark here and burn my tie. There's 2 other people from my MTC district serving here in Caldwell, and 1 in Nampa which is about 10 or so miles away, so we're probably gonna have 4 of us burning our tie here at the same tie. Gonna be fun when that happens. Time is moving by. Sometimes it seems slow cuz of our lack of work, but looking back it all goes by fast.

  

That’s pretty much the week. Nothing much is happening. We’ve only taught 6 lessons last week and not looking very likely we'll teach much more this week either. Kinda sucks when the work is slow, but it also cuts our work out for us. Lots of contacting and trying to keep busy. Now if we can just turn that into being productive, that'll be better.

Take care everyone!

Love,

Elder Blomquist