Two Month Mark

Wow this past week went by pretty fast. Thanks so much to everyone for your emails last week, sorry I haven't had a chance to respond to all of them, we only have about 1-2 hours to respond to emails every week so I do my best to respond to everyone but I'm sorry if I've been bad lately.

My companion Elder Wright and I have been trying really hard to talk to as many people as we can throughout Phoenix, and just try to see if anyone is interested in learning more about Jesus Christ, and if they would like to talk more to us about how we can help them come closer to Christ. So we've mainly been biking around all day, through the streets of Phoenix talking to a BUNCH of different kinds of people from all cultures and backgrounds, and we've found a few really nice, potential families this week.

One of them is Andrew, who with his wife are native Brazilians, speak fluent Portuguese (Stranz if you wanted to drive down and come to one of our lessons with us that'd be greatttt), but also speak really good English and decent Spanish as well. Andrew LOVES the bible and would talk about it with us for hours if we both had the time. We met him outside a McDonald's and talked about Christ's ministry for 10 straight minutes, he'd ask us questions like, "So what's your favorite part of the parable of the prodigal son?" Or, "What'd you like most about the story of Jesus healing the 10 lepers?" And we'd answer and everytime he'd say what his thoughts were and give us some great insight. He was super impressed that two 19 year olds knew anything about the scriptures so we've already got that bond with him. We have a lesson with his family tonight, that we're bringing the Branch President to (who's from Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish (duhh), English AND Portuguese, so we're really excited to have him come and hopefully it goes really well.

In other news the monsoons haven't been as noticeable this week we did get drenched one night (see picture) But more or less it's just been cloudy which honestly makes a huge difference because it brings the heat down about 10-15 degrees, which when it's 110 is the best thing in the world. I don't think I've talked about the ward (which is an English congregation) or branch (which is a Spanish congregation) that we're serving in much yet, but THEY ARE THE BEST. Both of them. The branch has some of the nicest, must humble and thoughtful people you'll ever meet. None of them have very much money, but they have us over for dinner 4-5 times per week (the ward has us over 2-3 times per week). There's not a ton of members in the branch (maybe 60 or so that come every week) but there's always stuff going on. We went through the Temple with the second counselor in the branch presidency on Saturday, which was really cool, such a nice man.

The ward definitely has a different dynamic then any I've ever been in, but there's still those 10-20 amazing families who treat us like our own. There's a family (the Lara's) who literally treat us like their own children. They have 5 kids (so I fit right in) the dad's in the bishopric and the moms in the stake young women's presidency, but they have us over for dinner almost every week and are just the nicest, funniest most entertaining people. Everytime they get new missionaries they stalk their Facebooks, Instagrams and Twitters to find embarrassing pictures of them, print them off and then add them to a bulletin board, it's sooooo funny. So far they've stalked my Facebook and Instagram and haven't found anything yet... They said they usually resort to emailing family or friends if they can't get anything so none of you turn on me please...

Other than that we had some meeting this week as a zone (which is just the missionaries in the area nearby so like 20-26 other missionaries) and just talked about ways we can improve and get better. Nothing too notable otherwise that I can think of. If any of you ever have any questions about what I'm doing, what certain things mean in my emails (like maybe you're not sure what going to the temple means) please feel free to email me any time with questions, or visit LDS.org to research some more about what we believe.

In terms of a spiritual thought this week my companion shared this with me and I love it. Hope you can get something from it: In The Lion King when Simba meets Rafiki, they start talking and, Rafiki hits Simba on the head and Simba, rubbing his head in pain says "What was that for?!" Rafiki in response says "It doesn't matter it's in the past." And Simba says of course says, "Yeah but it still hurts." to which Rafiki offers some very wise words that I love, "Ahh yes the past can hurt, but the way I see it we can either run from it, or learn from it." (Rafiki Swings his stick again) But this time Simba dodges the swing and Rafiki says "Ahh see!!! Now what are you going to do?!" ... I love this because we make mistakes, we say things that we don't mean, we mess up. But what matters after we mess up is what we do. Do we run from it? Do we learn from it? Do we not only learn but, make amends and strive to never make that same mistake again? Just food for thought. Everyone has problems, trials and things their facing, but what matters most is what we learn from them, and how we grow once we've been through them.

Anyway hope you all have had a good week, thanks again for all your emails!! I love hearing from ya, even if I can't always respond right away. You all are the best.

Elder Merrill