So yeah, this week has been hot, to say the least. We haven't had a high temperature below 30 degrees since Christmas and this week we didn't have a high below 35. I'm pretty sure that trend is going to continue for this coming week as well. I remember it being like this last February as well. Feb is just the hottest month of the year. We haven't had rain yet this year either, so hopefully we get some soon and we're able to come out of this hot streak. Elder Lowe and I have been tracting like crazy too because we basically had a purge of all of our investigators over the past two weeks. Over Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we tracted a total of 8 hours, 4 of those being on Thursday. We just loaded up on sunscreen and water and went to it. When you're actually out in the heat for that long of time you kind of stop feeling it as much. The only thing you feel is the sweat dripping down your face and the nice shiny layer of sweat on your arms and that. So those three days were good. On Thursday we set a goal for this coming week to tract for 25 hours total, and then later that evening we found out from a member that there wasn't a day below 35 degrees on the 7 day forecast. Oh, the cunning designs of the evil one. We set that goal and we are keen on achieving it. We know the Lord will bless us for not only being out there and finding the elect, but for achieving our goal. For those of you that don't know, 25 hours is A LOT to tract in one week, especially in this kind of heat, but we're prepared for it. Usually we do about 7-8 hours total over the entire week, so even 8 hours in 3 days seemed like a lot, but 25 is just going to be hectic. I know from experience though that if you're out there doing the Lord's work, searching for those that have been prepared to hear the gospel, the Lord with bless us with people to teach. Even if they don't come directly from tracting, He will provide us with someone to teach from some other way. Possibly from a member referral or someone we meet at the shops or anything like that. It only works if we talk to EVERYONE though. "Open your mouths and spare not, and ye shall be laden with sheaves upon your backs, for lo, I am with you". We're hoping in this case that being laden with sheaves is being laden with investigators to teach. Lots of prayers are going to be backing this 25 hour tracting week that's for sure. We don't want to be relying on our own efforts to find people to teach. We just need to ask every day to find someone, and it will happen, I'm sure of it.
On Tuesday this week I was a bit sick. Well actually I started to feel sick on Monday night after p-day and that sick feeling caused me to not be able to sleep all night so on Tuesday I was utterly exhausted. I don't know what it was but it was just an unbearable stomach pain that cause me to not be able to get comfortable in no matter what position I tried to sleep in. On Tuesday the stomach pain wasn't as intense, but yeah like I said, I had absolutely 0% energy. The unfortunate thing was that we had our monthly specialised training meeting on Tuesday and Elder Lowe and I were meant to be giving training on how the Book of Mormon is key in conversion. We were going to pretend that there were two identical investigators and we asked them two different questions. One question was going to be "Do you believe that God exists?" and the other one was going to be "Do you believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God". Then we were going to talk about how many eternal truths the investigator can learn by answering yes to each of those questions. If all they know is that God is real, then they'll probably believe the Bible to be true and that they need to do their best to get to heaven and that's about it. Whereas if they know the Book of Mormon to be true then they not only know that truth, but they know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, the church is true, God has a plan for us, we're not saved by grace alone, the list goes on and on. Elder Lowe said it went really well without me anyways, which is good I guess. My spirit was willing to give the training, but my flesh was weak, so I just went into the mothers lounge at the chapel and had a bit of a sleep during the meeting since I could finally lay down without feeling like I was getting stabbed in the side. So that was a bummer. The training that we had planned was really good too, I felt pretty bad that I couldn't give the training with Elder Lowe but that he had to do it by himself. It would have been my first opportunity to give training to the zone as a whole too. I'll get another chance this Friday for our Zone Meeting though, so I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully we can plan something as good as what we had planned before.
Crazy experience this week! So we were doing some tracting on Wednesday and we had been going for about an hour and had about 20 minutes left before our dinner appointment. It was a pretty average day of tracting, hot, not too much success, the works. So with 20 minutes left we knocked on this one door and the guy that came to the door was wearing a blue shirt that said "TULSA" on it. The first thing out of my mouth before Elder Lowe could even say "Hello, we're missionaries..." was "HEY! Are you from Oklahoma!?" He was kind of caught off guard because I'm sure he doesn't get that very often when he's wearing that shirt. Well he wasn't actually from Oklahoma but he said that he had lived there for about 3 years back in the 80's. He said he loved it too. We had a pretty good chat. I told him how much Tulsa has probably changed over the last 20-30 years since he has been there, not that I know how much it's changed, but I'm sure that it has. He didn't even know where places like Jenks were or anything. It turned out too that his wife is actually a less-active member, but she wasn't there at the time because she's a "FIFO" worker, Fly in Fly out. Which means she works about 2-3 weeks up in the mines or where ever she is in the middle of WA and then flies back for a week then repeats the cycle. That's actually what heaps of people do, it's definitely the most popular job in WA, mining is huge. But yeah, she was a member and he was a practicing Catholic. He told us we could come back whenever we wanted so we're going to try back next week and try to catch his wife as well. Really cool guy though. Mike his name was, in his 60's or so. I never thought I would ever meet someone or even see someone wearing some kind of Oklahoma shirt or had even ever been to Oklahoma on my mission, but now I have. It was a pretty exciting experience meeting him even though he hadn't been there since the 80's and he had only been in Tulsa, never made his way down to the city.
So yeah, that's my past week in a nutshell. Awesome week it was. This week is bound to be interesting as well. Zone Leader Council tomorrow. ZLC is becoming my favourite part of the month. Since we had two in February because of President Callister's visit and there's only 28 days, it feels like we just had one the other day and now we're having another one. But usually we only have it on the first of the month. And tomorrow after that I'm going on an exchange with Elder Ulas which is going to be awesome. I don't know if you remember him, but he was the Elder from Vanuatu that got to be with me and Elder Glover for a few days when he first came into the country. His English has improved dramatically since then and he is heaps fun to be around now. He tells me that when I come to Vanuatu, I have a place to stay haha. So I need to do my best to make it there someday.
Well I'm off for this week. I hope the COLD is treating you all well. I'll trade you 38 degrees Cecilius for 38 degrees Fahrenheit. Sounds like a fair trade to me! Have a great week! I'll talk to you all soon!
Lova yas!
Elder Tanner
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