Bleh

Hola, everyone!

First off, I must that of all the weeks I've spent on my mission, I'm sure glad this one is over.  XD

We went on exchanges this last week, I was in Valencia with Elder Stephens, it was good!  That first picture sums that exchange up- we done did teach people the gospel, and found random funny things in the middle of nowhere (hence the picture).

We had interviews with President Guffey on Wednesday, where he told me that "within the next two or three days" I will be getting a companion- whether it was the one I was meant to train, or a different missionary who's companion was going to go home...  It is now day five and I'm still in a trio...  *sigh* paperwork. :(  Don't get me wrong, being in a trio is a lot of fun-it's just seems that it's more tiring as well.

Next, we went on an abrupt split with the assistants to the president.  They had an investigator for us, but we both had lessons at that time, so we went on splits so we could cover both lessons and introduce the other missionaries to the investigator, so that was fun.  We have this weekly sports activity that we do as a district to build member trust, and so the 5 elders in my district played indoor soccer in our "proselyting attire"-normal missionary clothes.  With how much traction these shoes have I think I might go into speed-skating when I get back.  XD Needless to say, as with all other missionaries (except when participating in the spud tug), we won.

Then Friday.  You know the stereotypical view of Mondays?  Yeah, that was Friday this last week.  We have district council every week, where we receive training on what to do and how to do it as missionaries, right?  Well, we got permission to leave our area (before district council) to go to UNM hospital and give a blessing to a brother who was in a car accident the night before.  The blessing goes well, and then we give a blessing to the father of the guy.  Thirty seconds after that, the father and I catch Elder Schraedel as he's falling to the ground.  Elder Riehle and I then spent the next 1.5 hours (that was supposed to be district council) in the hospital waiting room while the doctors check out Elder Schraedel.  Don't worry, he's alright.  Moral of the story: eat breakfast before you have high-stress situations, especially if you don't do good around blood and such like that.

Saturday there was a ward activity for the Ladera ward, it was awesome!  They went to find some of the people that are on the ward list but that nobody knew, so some families went to go find them.  We (the ward) ended up with 82 houses knocked on, and 7-8 people/families for us missionaries to go and visit, all within 1.5 hours. 

Sunday was going great, until I was passing the sacrament. There were some people there that were visiting from some Utah college.  They were in town for some race.  As I'm passing the sacrament, I recognize one of the girls there as a girl who graduated a year after me from Shelley, we were on the same track team for like 5 years.  (For those of you who know, it was Paytin) and I was confused and weirded out for the rest of the day.  I forgot that people from Shelley are even real people, it psyched me out.

Glad to be done with this week, even though it's been epic(ly stressful)!

Te whanaunga mo ake tonu!  Hear from you next week!

Elder Eli James Dial