06/29/15 Mon

We had another visit with Lona today. She had us throw away two bottles of wine from her fridge. One of the bottles is from her late husband on their wedding day over 20 years ago. The other bottle I think she received as a housewarming gift from her daughter. Lona doesn't really drink, but she wanted to give them up without us prompting her. It was really hard for her to give them up though, she was crying as we threw them away. I can tell she is getting a lot closer to being ready for baptism. She is following the commandments with exactness because she is feeling prompted to change through the spirit. 

Lona asked us to take a pile of checkbooks and burn them since she doesn't have a shredder. We don't have a fire pit, so we had to use a dirty pot we found under the sink.  We probably looked like a couple of hobos as we sat around a burning pot outside our garage. We didn't have a lighter fluid so we used engine oil; Hopefully the fumes didn't harm us. We had to burn the checks 2-3 at a time, so we didn't get done until around 11 pm. Now we have a pot full of ashes that we don't know how we are going to dispose of it.

06/30/15 Tues

We got to do family history again today. It is becoming my favorite part of the week. I was running out of work to do when Elder Hill showed me that you can set someone else's tree as the focal point and you can start to work backwards to their children. After about 5 minutes I already found a few places where there holes in the tree where some cousins are missing. I can really see potential with this feature and I think I will probably find some names that need to be taken to the temple. I don't know if I will be able to do their work since we wouldn't have time for baptisms, initiatory, and endowment when we go to the temple. At least their work will be able to be done for them.

After family history, we went over to see Ross. The lesson went a bit rough at first, but we were able to teach him about the word of wisdom. He has been smoking and has cut down from what he used to since switching to rolling his own cigarettes. He is willing to have us text him daily to help him quit. This is some good progress towards his baptismal date of August 1st.

For dinner we went over to Elder and Sister Price's house. They are the senior missionaries that teach a lot of the Amish kids in Danville. Sister Price made empanadas because she wanted to try making something we enjoyed back at home.  They turned out really good, the filling was spot on. The crust could have used a bit more water, but I hadn't included that part in the recipe. I am really grateful for effort Sister Price put into help us feel more at home. She also made applesauce cookies because that us something Elder Hill's Mom would make all the time. She asked if there were any other  recipes we really liked and I told her about the chicken bacon pesto pizza, so maybe I will be eating that next week.

07/01/15 Wed

To start off the day, we drove over to Howard to do exchanges with the Mount Vernon 2 Elders again. This time Elder Hendrickson came to Danville with me and Elder Hill went to Mount Vernon with Elder Anderson. This is the last exchange before the end of the transfer, then we get to start all over.

We drove down to our zone training together with the other elders. We had to drive down to Newark. We are supposed to be conserving miles but there are a lot of far away meetings that we have to go to each month. I really enjoyed the meeting though. We talked about "Divine Discontent", it is like the good version of guilt. It is the motivating factor to continually be improving. Essentially we should be happy with what we accomplish, but never satisfied with the status quo.

After the training, all of the elders in our district went out to eat at Wendy's. When we helped the Shores move about 3 weeks ago they gave all of us a $10 gift card. We just wanted to help, so it was really nice for the Shores to do that.

After getting back to Danville with Elder Hendrickson we stopped by the Hochstetler's wood shop to drop off some sacrament cups. We had also brought some coke and mentos with us since they had never seen it react before now. We used mentos gum because I couldn't find my regular ones. The drink fizzed up a lot, but it wasn't nearly as explosive as it usually is.

Brother Weaver called us while we were at the Hochstetler's and needed our help moving some furniture into his store. Sean Smith was there helping and there was a lot of furniture to unload. Moving heavy stuff has been hard for me. I tire really easy and I want to keep helping, but my body just can't keep up. There are times where I fee like I am not pulling my weight in service and I feel really bad about it. Then all I can do is keep praying to Heavenly Father for the strength to carry on helping. I hope we have more opportunities for service that use some talents that I am able to be of some help. I have already helped fix a couple of internet connections, maybe I will get more of those chances in the future.

After moving furniture, the Weaver's invited us and Sean to stay for dinner until softball started. Softball was really fun to watch this week. One team got ahead by seven points in a row in one inning. Then the other team got six points in a row in one inning. It was a close game.

Back at the residence, Elder Hedrickson and I prepared a surprise for Elder Hill. Elder Hill has been feeling down because he goes home in just under two months. I decided I wanted to get him a bunch of Jolly Ranchers because he always likes taking candy from Lona's candy dish when we visit her. Of course I can't just leave a bag of candy on his bed; I have to do something fun with it. So Elder Hendrickson and I tied the Jolly Ranchers together with some brightly colored yarn. We stayed up until almost midnight listening to veggie tales music and tying Jolly Ranchers together. In the morning, we took the giant chain and started wrapping it around his bed. This took more effort than expected. All of the left over Jolly Ranchers we put it in his drawers and clothing pockets. There were a lot of left over candies because I had bought a 4 lb. bag. I wasn't sure how many it was going to take so I just got the larger bag.

Since Elder Hill was feeling a little stressed, I decided to do something fun for him. When we were on exchanges, Elder Hendrickson helped me use yarn to tie up his bed with Jolly Ranchers.

 A limo of returned missionaries showed up at the woodshop for church this week.

We went for a buggy ride with Brother Weaver and his kids. The horse's name is Judy.