Staying in Payette another transfer! I'm both excited and not about that. We've been picking this area up like no other, but I was kinda hoping to go zone leader or just for some change, but it's whatever. They're redoing my district too. Before it was the sisters in Nyssa and us, but now we have us, the elders in Weiser (my best friend out this way), and the elders in McCall. McCall is 2 hours away though, so I've got a pretty big district. But it's gonna be good. Gonna be weird not having sisters in my district. Been 10 months or so since I've had a full elder district. I can actually do exchanges now.

We've had a pretty good week. These past 2 weeks have been the best we've seen in this area. Things are just exploding here. Not sure what it is, we're really not doing anything different than we had been, but all the work we're putting in is starting to show some results. We've found a bunch of new people to start working with.

My camera broke. The button to take pictures doesn't always go through. I can still take pictures, but takes a while sometimes. I'll send pics when I can, but I don't know how many more I'll be able to take.

 

Remember back when I set my hand on fire? I actually found a lesson to teach with that. I relate it to the atonement, and how we sometimes hold on to these things that hurt us (the fire). We let it stay so long it hurts us (still got some scars on my hand from the 1st time, was probably a 2nd degree burn after all). But there is a cure, the atonement of Christ. After I burned myself I put on a LOT of aloe to help it. I relate that to the atonement and how after we get burned, we can apply the healing balm of the atonement and take our pain away. We'll still have our scars, they remind us of where we've been, but they don't hurt anymore. Through the atonement we can be healed. What do you think of that lesson? Yes, I actually do set my hand on fire again when I do it. This has become one of my favorite lessons to teach people.

Well, gotta run now. Hope to hear from y'all soon!

Elder Blomquist

This has been an interesting week, I'll say that. It's felt long, but it's gone by quick. It's actually been one of our better weeks, we taught 15 lessons this week. Most our work is dealing with less actives, but that's alright. We've found a couple new people to teach. One is a less active, and another we know nothing about. They're members, been here for 9 months, yet nobody in the ward know who they are. This area's been dead for a while, but we're slowly bringing it back up. We've been doing a lot of work, I'm always amazed at how many lessons we teach a week compared to how many people we have to teach.

Transfers are coming up. It's in a week. I've only got 4 transfers left. Crazy to think that I may only have 1-2 more areas and 1-2 more companions.. I think I'm gonna stay another with Elder Witbeck, but we'll see what happens.

Have some food stories. That's one of the only problems I have serving in Idaho, the food is all normal. So that means we have to go and make our stories happen. We had a member offer us a cow tongue. Another member we're close with works at a BBQ place, so she smoked it up for us. It was pretty good. It kinda tasted like a mix between beef and pork. Was better fresh though, it didn't reheat very well. Also tried cow liver. Same family that gave us the tongue gave us the liver. The liver wasn't that good though. So now I can say I've eaten most of a cow now actually. Had the oysters, the tongue, liver, and steaks. Can also add pickled pigs feet to the list.

Had our house inspections this week. We won a grand prize! It was pretty cool, only took 18 months. Not that I was trying before, but it's cool to get it once.

well, that's about it as far as this email goes.

Take care!

Elder Blomquist

 

 

 

18 month mark tradition - burn a pair of pants.

 

My usual P- Day Crew
(from left)   Elder Witbeck, Elder Blomquist, Elder Andelin (in the suit), and Elder Downey



 

Been another week. Elder Witbeck rolled his ankle last week on pday, so we spent a few days inside. It's not been too bad though, we found 3 new people to teach this week. This area needs that bad. But it feels like I've forgotten how to teach. We've spent most of our days contacting, so my door approaches have gotten better, but teaching is a new concept now = P . But it's all good, such is life. Some areas are good, some need to be worked till they are.

This week feels like it's gone by so fast, they all seem that way. Was realizing last night that \I've only got 4 transfers left... Where is all the time going? I've been getting trunky. It's a new kind of feeling. All throughout you get those trunky moments, but it's nothing like this. IT's that "ready to come home feeling". But more than just being ready to come home, it's that it's actually becoming a reality. When I was out 3-10 months it was just like, "yeah, that would be nice, but it's so far away". Now at 18 it's like, "dang, that's close". I'm still out and working and all that, but it's coming close.

So there's been a change in email policy for missionaries, now friends can email as well. We've been given more time to email as well. So anyone who write me can now do so by email and I can write back.  (Ricky's e-mail is richard.blomquist@myldsmail.net.)  It's actually pretty neat, since I've not been much to writing letters.

Let's see, what else? Guess I'm not much for writing emails either. I've been sitting over this one for almost 2 hours now = P

New missions coming soon! I hope I stay in the Nampa mission. (His mission area is splitting in two to create a new mission.) All my friends are there. It's exciting, as are the transfers in 2 weeks.

well, that's all for this week, gotta run now.

Take care!

Elder Blomquist

This has been a crap week. It's probably the most frustrating and disheartening week I've ever had. We had a lot of potential for this week, we worked hard the week before and set up a lot of visits with a lot of new people. Every single one of them cancelled. We had like 12 or so lessons set with people, and only 2 of them held their appointment. Every single one of them cancelled. This area is dead, there's no work going on here. We still have some names of people to go try, our wards (or 2 of them) have been pretty good about supplying us with names of go visit, but we're down to contacting and tracting. This area is dead and it's gonna take a lot of hard work to revive it. It's not gonna be fun, we're pretty tired of contacting and all these cancelled appointments, but I guess that's how it goes.
We also might be losing one of our investigators. The only 1 who has a baptism date, and she might be moving to Nampa unless she can find a place here in Payette.

But the one contact that did keep their appointment was good. It's a family of 4, and we were excited for that. There was a possibility of 2-4 new investigators depending on the ages of the kids. We're glad they held their appointment, as they said they were gonna feed us dinner too. We go and find out the parents are both already members, just less active, and the kids are 7 and 5. It was kind of a bummer that there was no new investigators outta that visit, but it was a good visit. They've both been less active for a while and want to start coming back to church. We need to start at square one, they don't really have a knowledge of the gospel, but we're the right ones to talk to about that. They're awesome people, I hope we can help them.

There's not much else to say about this week. Lots of cancelled visits, disappointments, and hardships. Every month I've identified an attribute I wanna work on and a scripture associated with it, March is "optimism" with a verse in Alma 4 "... nevertheless the spirit of the Lord did not fail him". I think it's fitting for what's going on here. I'm working to have the optimism to work through all the disappointments. This is my hardest area, it's def trying me. Hopefully I can keep up the strength, patience, and faith to keep working through the disappointments.

Take care!

Elder Blomquist