Been a decent week again. Another one of those where it was an off week, yet we managed to still do good work. Elder Fullmer and I are staying in Nampa together, I think this'll be my last transfer here.

 

 

Hard to believe I've almost spent a year in 2 areas. We've got a lot going for us here though, just heard of some kids who want to be baptized (parents are less active and coming back to church), a part-member family has agreed to take the discussions and learn about the church, investigator close to baptism, and we got some other stuff going for us. It's an exciting time, but part of me was ready to leave.

 

Did a lot of service this week. That part member family was getting some hay, so we spent 2 mornings baling it with them. It was a lot of fun, and I might possibly have a job when I get off. I was the one in the trailer stacking the hay, and he was impressed, said I did a good job. Sorta jokingly asked "so would you hire me to do ranch work?" and he was like "oh yeah, I'd put you to work. Few more things you'd have to learn, but I'd put ya to work". Said we learned fast and did a better job the 2nd time as opposed to the 1st. So I might have a job as a rancher when I get home, wouldn't that be neat? I'm planning on moving back up to Idaho, now I might have a job to get me started.

 

Other than that it's not been a very exciting week. Last week of the transfer is always a rough one; you're just waiting for transfer calls and don't wanna do anything. But we managed to stay busy and got 17 lessons. I'm kinda excited to stay too though. Last transfer Nampa Zone did the best in the mission (16 baptisms [next highest zone was 7] and about 450 total lessons) and we set our goals higher for this month.

 

Not excited for our "new" car though... We had a 2012 Subaru legacy, and it was awesome, I loved that car. It drove perfect was really spacious, and just a good car overall. Now we traded with some other missionaries and we have an older Malibu. It's brown and ugly, is a wild drive, and has a turn radius the size of a boat (hence the name "maliboat"). It's gonna take some time getting used to... We got the short end of the stick too. We inherited the miles they already used, so we gained an extra 15 miles PLUS the 25 they used to drive it there. so overall we lost about 40 or so miles, that's gonna be a killer. We only get 875 a month which averages to about 28 or so a day (a little under 30), so the loss of 40 means at least 1 day of walking if we're not careful (or maybe even if we are careful... my bike I inherited has a busted tire and I've not had it checked yet). And they were supposed to clean it but didn't, so we have to do that now (not that we cleaned our either though... we washed the outside, got all the dirt off, but we didn't vacuum. But the sisters didn't do anything to theirs). Less miles, dirty car we gotta clean, sounds like a good deal right? yeah...

 

That's pretty much it. Looking forward to another transfer here. I've doubled my baptisms (up to 4 now) and had a lot of fun in this area. It's been a lot of work and there's still a lot of work we need to put into it (out of our 4 wards we got 3 new ward mission leaders and have started a new program to spark member missionary work. We give a lesson then leave a commitment to do missionary work [something easy like meeting a new neighbor or having a friend over for dinner, something fun and easy, yet is missionary work nonetheless], then tie a piece of yarn around their wrist to remind them to do it and provoke questions from friends and acquaintances). 1 of our wards has jumped right on this and is having the ward missionaries help us out, and we're working on getting it going in the other wards as well. So far everyone loves the idea (even President Cannon) and it's starting to take off. It'll be slow in the get-go, but once it goes it'll just explode. We're excited for it and so are the wards. We have good ward support here, we've really worked hard to build and maintain that.

 

Take care everyone!

Love,

Elder Blomquist