The Things Missionary Mom's Don't Want to Hear About

Transfers just happened. I’m finally staying!! Both a good and bad thing. Not too much work here and def not my favorite place, but I’ve had fun. Lots of fun w/ one of our wards and the elders who I serve with are all cool. Did get a new companion, Elder Cronin. He’s from Mississippi. 4 transfers, 3 areas, 4 companions. crazy numbers. We’ve got 2 southerners and 2 Californians living together now.

Before I go any further, Mom, you might want to find something soft to put in your hands. I can see you facepalming after reading some of the things I have to say.

Gonna hit my 6 month mark this transfer. Pretty cool, we've got 2 other Elders in the zone who came out of the MTC with me, so all 3 of us are gonna burn a tie together. Crazy to think I’ve been out that long. So little, yet so long at the same time.

Got something soft yet?

You think Elders are mature and grown up right? Well, not in Caldwell! We’re probably one of the biggest bunch of idiots ever here. Lately we've been farting on a lighter, and guess what? I have the best 2 so far :] . Got it on video too. Just a random aspect of missionary life I thought you might enjoy.

Not really been getting any better. Been another hard week. My ear still rings, and lately I’ve been having a lot of sinus pain. I’ve still been able to be out doing work, but it hurts. Saw doc again and he said there's nothing that we can do yet, we just need to wait. It’s not been fun. He gave me some medicine and I’ve taken it all now, so if the problems still persist he wants to do a hearing test and maybe x-ray my sinuses too. I hope everything clears up though. I don’t want to go through another week of this.

We had a zone meeting on Friday too. Kinda like a big district meeting. Had a breakfast the zone leaders made us, had some trainings, transfer predictions, and zone awards. Mine was "most likely to circumcise a baby with a dull rock". Makes no sense right? Elder Bowers, my district leader, made that one for me. He’s always calling me a Jew when we play games and I win, so he thought it a fitting one.

What else this week? We haven’t done much. Between the pain and transfers coming up, not much was done. Oh, but we have gotten into something else too.        Still got your cushion?      It's called planking. I don’t know if you already know what it is, but it's pretty dumb. All you do is lie across something and go stiff and take a picture of it. The family we live with has some alpacas, so we're trying to convince them to let us plank an alpaca, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. They did say there’s' a big mountain of poop we could plank, so I might try that.

I don’t like getting new companions... just when I start getting used to one they leave and I have to start all over again. It’s gonna be another good transfer though. Hard again, but good. We switched up the wards again here. We were covering 2 buildings and it was a nightmare getting back and forth to meetings on Sundays, and the way it was split just wasn’t good for the work, so we moved it again. Now we only cover 1 building and things will be easier. Mine is a car area, which I’m not too thrilled about, but I think the work can move forward better now. I hope I know the area well enough. I know one ward alright, but the one we just got to know only a few people in and know nothing about the geography.

That’s pretty much what's been happening with me. Only a few more days till I hit my 5 month mark! So close yet so far. Take care everyone!

Love,

Elder Blomquist

What A Week

What a week... easily the most miserable of the mission.

I’ve been sick this week... it's almost an ear infection. Last Tuesday my ear started ringing a little bit, but I thought nothing of it and brushed it off. Wednesday I took real notice of it and it started hurting and my ear hurt, my head hurt, and I felt nautious (no idea how to spell it = P ). Came home after district meeting and stayed in the rest of the day. Thursday same deal. Had to come back in and only got about an hour of proselyting in. Friday I was able to go out for a little bit, but had to come back in as well. Got about 4 hours of work done that day. Saturday I was able to be out and about all day, but it was still uncomfortable and hurt a bit. Sunday and today are the same deal. One of the bishops in our area is an ENT and took a look and said there was some inflammation in my ear, but nothing specifically wrong yet. He gave me some meds and wants to look at it again on Friday. It’s been a miserable week. Lost 3 days of working and I really don’t like that. But I don’t like working while feeling like crap either, so it's a lose-lose situation either way.

That’s really how my week has been. Pretty much been sick or feeling like crap all week. We did pick up a new investigator this week. She’s good friends with a member family and has been talking for the last 3 years or so about how she wants to get baptized when she's 18. Well, her 18th birthday was 2 weeks ago and she said she wanted to start meeting with us. Had dinner at the member’s house and then had a Q & A session the turned into the 1st discussion. Was a good lesson. She was talking about how she wants to get married in the temple, yet she doesn’t know much about the church. I think she'll probably get baptized eventually.

Transfers are next week. We get calls on Friday. I can see me staying, I can see me leaving, I can see me moving to the other side of the stake. It’s so unpredictable. Write to the mission office till I can tell you what's happening. I don’t want another mishap w/ my mail. I’m still getting the most mail out of anyone. My companion just got his 1st letter since I’ve been here this last week. Always fun to brag about my mail. They all claim greenie mail, but mail is still mail. Either way, I really love and appreciate the letters.

Well, that's my week... sick. I think I’m on the mend though. I’m able to get out for the most part. We’ll find out next week what the real problem is I’m guessing.

Take care everyone.

Love,

Elder Blomquist

We Love Pictures!!!

Crane family.  They take very good care of missionaries in the Meridian area.

The Crane family thinks every good missionary needs a Boise State University T-shirt.  After all, isn't everyone a BSU fan?

Above, standing on a frozen pool.  

Below, Elders Blomquist and Crosby standing on the frozen pool.

Three Elders were too much and it started to crack.

Elder Blomquist's new best friend, Nick.  He had LOTS of dog hair on him afterwards.

Elder Crosby got ice cream sent from home for Christmas.  Elder Crosby is from Houston, TX.  Any good Houstonian knows about Blue Bell Ice Cream.  It is one of THE best ice creams around.  It is only available in select areas of the country.  When Ricky was little, we toured the factory.  Free samples at the end - YUM!!!

The Khallis family.  The are another family that takes good care of missionaries.   He is a chiropractor and gives them adjustments.

 Elder Blomquist says this is getting ready for companion study.  Yes, that is a sword.  Maybe it is the Sword of Truth.

This is a picture of a job chart at one of the houses he visited.  I don't know if you can see it, but by Caleb's name it says his chores are playing and being awesome.

Perfect Timing

Ok, I did forget something (what's new though?). I got a package from the Waxmans that was pretty cool. It’s kinda sad at the same time too...

In the package there was a tie, envelopes, stamps, paper, and pens. I was excited about that!! Kinda sad when you get excited over pens and postage though = P . But on the other hand, I had 2 envelopes left (used one to write back to them), 4 stamps (used 1 to mail their letter), out of paper (had to open their pack to write to them), and my last pen ran out of ink the next day. It was perfect timing for what was in there.

Transfer is almost over. We’re just starting week 5. Only 1 more p-day after today. The work's moving here in Caldwell. Slowly, but it's going up. We’re going to split the area again next transfer. It’s not working too well right now the way it is. We’re working and having dinner in one ward, then having to get to the other side of the stake in 5 minutes to make it to another appointment. The changes should make it easier too. Sundays are a nightmare too. we have church at 11, with meetings before, then church w/ meetings before at 1 at a different building. Covering 2 buildings who have sacrament back to back is difficult. We’ve had to leave sacrament early lots of times to make it to meetings in the other ward. with the split we'll only be covering the 1 building so it'll be more manageable.

It’s been COLD this week. started snowing last Wednesday and it's been cold, rainy, and windy ever since. It was fun in the snow though. It was district meeting and we played in the snow after. We probably got 3-5 inches of snow, more than I have ever seen fall ever before. Luckily President gave us another car in the area till the end of transfers so we've been off the bikes in the bad weather. Woulda been miserable on bikes.

We decided to go to mutual this week. The YW in the ward have a goal of 108 baptisms this year (most of them overlapping each other), so we decided to go and participate in their talent show and expose us to them. It was fun. We did bumblebee bumblebee skit. Everyone loved it and we won 5th place. I love doing that skit. It was different and a little weird not doing it w/ mark, but it worked out good.

What else? Not much has happened this week. We’ve been spending our time contacting people (mostly members) and trying to pick up the work. It’s really frustrating, especially during the days when nobody is home, since we haven’t gotten in too many houses. We’re getting a few referrals, but contact them all is hard when we can’t catch em home.

That’s pretty much everything that happened. Nothing exciting this week. Well, last Monday we got pulled over. Elder Bell was driving 45 in a 35 zone. The cop had another call so he let us off the hook, but that's only the 2nd time I’ve been in a car getting pulled over (the 1st was driving in a church parking lot when I was 14 learning to drive and someone called us in on suspicious driving)

Well, that's this week. Hope everything's going good. I’m still loving it out here and having a blast

Love,

Elder Blomquist

Scary Experience This Week

Happy belated birthday Mom!! Hope you had a good one. Pretty sure that you had a better day than I did. I was sick on the 11th... felt dizzy, dry heaved, slept for 2 hours, then stayed in the rest of the day. It wasn’t fun cancelling dinner or sitting out on the lesson we had scheduled that night.

 I don’t have a lot of time, the family history center closes in 30 minutes, so I’ll try to get everything I want to say.

 It's been a hard week... President said something about watching for pride in zone conference on the 6th, and I took it to heart and looked at what was going on and found some pride in me. Spent the week praying for humility, and I got it alright... pretty much every day last week at least 1 thing was unpleasant that worked to strip me of that pride. Anything from a comment someone said to upset me to the death of the 1st counselor in the mission presidency, things were just bad this week.

Went to my 1st funeral. President Kotter (1^st counselor in the Mission Presidency) died last week and his funeral was on Friday. I never really got to know him, but he spoke at zone conference even though he wasn’t feeling too well, and then he passed away 3 days later. It was a good service.

 Had probably the scariest experience on my mission now too. We took the ward list and started contacting the members/less active/part member families, and we went to one house and the wife said they weren’t interested. The husband came out as we were about to ride away and basically yelled at us for coming by and that he was ex-military and if we or anyone from our church came by again there would be problems. 1st time for both me and Elder Bell, so we had no idea what to do. It was kinda scary.

That’s pretty much been this week. Next week should be busier, the area is starting to pick up some, but there’s a still lot of work to do. We taught about 5-7 lessons this week, and hopefully we'll have more than that next week. I’m excited about this area. If we keep diligent and work hard, it'll pick up and be a really good area.

We’ve got a baptism on the 3^rd of March, so hopefully I’ll be here for that. Transfers are Feb. 6, so we'll see if this is the area I stay in for more than 1 transfer.

Take care everyone!

 Love,

Elder Blomquist

I Love It Out Here

I love it out here on the mission.  I don't want to come home, even though it's 20 months away.  This is my life and I'd be kinda lost without it.  I love the work.  This week should be our busiest week.  We already have about 2-3 lessons a day planned. 12-15 lessons would just about double our usual number for the week.  The area is starting to pick up.  We've been biking the whole transfer so far, but we're gonna start taking the car.  I'd rather be biking but I see the need for the car.  Our area is huge.  It takes about half an hour to ride from one church building to the next.  And we have some people who live way out in the boonies and we don't really have the time to be biking out there and bike back.  Gonna start planning better and using the car so the area should pick up even more when that happens.

Lots of finding.  We don't have too many people we're working with so we're on the finding.  I really don't like it.  One of our wards is pretty missionary minded.  They have about a dozen or more ward missionaries (there's over 500 people in the ward though).  On Fast Sunday, they had 400 people then and the week after it was like 360 or so.  We had to open the gym and set up more chairs.  They are all pretty active.  They do all our new member discussions and visit members to fire them up and help them with missionary work.  That ward has always been one of the best wards, but the way I hear it some missionaries in the past hated that ward, (heard a missionary who served here 3 month ago or so say that), and the work died.  It is weird ward to be working in.  They do things in a way different than any other ward I've served in, but they've got potential.  Once we get things going again, I bet it'll be our best ward.

I'm excited about/for this area.  I think we as missionaries need to be more obedient and diligent, but it's got potential and I'm excited to see what becomes of it.  Even if I do end up getting transferred.  I've planted some seeds and paved the way for the next set who serve here.  As usual, I probably won't see the fruits of my labors (although you never know - transfers are unpredictable), I'm laying the foundation.

Love,

Elder Blomquist