31 Degrees and Chaos

 Monday was pretty lame. It honestly fell on us since we did not do much besides go thrifting for a bit. I was still recovering from my sickness, but I am feeling so much better now. I did get the chance to workout for two hours on Monday which is always a bonus. Working up a sweat on the exercise bike is unbeatable. We went into the night and all three of our lessons canceled so we went around stopping at people's homes. We knocked on someone we weren't in contact with named Tina. She opened the door and gave us hugs. It was nice. She is extremely open in learning about the restored gospel. How cash money is that!

There is a younger family in the ward named the Sides. They have two young kids both under the age of 3. They are actually vegan and they invite us over for dinner every other week. I've been over there about 4 times now and they always introduce us to something we have never had before. One of the nights they gave us "nice cream." It was ice cream, but the base of it was just frozen Bananas. They gave us one of their old food processors and I decided to master the nice cream. We made a couple of batches and the one that was so good was the peanut butter chocolate reese's nice cream. Yeah. You heard that right. It is so yummy. I am learning so many new good habits on the mission. I love it. 

We received a text from our mission President into our mission chat during the morning on Wednesday. He instructed us that we should not leave our apartment unless it is an emergency. You might be wondering what is going on in Michigan. We got a warning about freezing rain coming. It was predicted that there would be .5 inches of frozen rain on the roads. All schools, activities, and the whole city shut down. They were nervous about the power going out as well. We had to cancel 5 lessons and had to replan out our day Wednesday. Who knew a 31 degree storm could cause such chaos. Towards the end of the night we received a phone call from the Spanish elders that their power went out and they were crashing at our place. Wednesday I got to experience what it was like to be a quarantine missionary. We saw a lot of success. It was a needed day contacting nearly 100 plus people. 

This honestly worked out well. Since the Spanish elders were over at our home over the night, we began exchanges at 6:30am. I was with Elder Allen for the day. He got to begin the day off strong with me. I ran him through a workout. He will wake up sore tomorrow haha. I went on an exchange with him last transfer as well since he is also a new missionary in the mission field. We set some really meaningful goals. One thing that is quite unfortunate about this district is that the trainers are holding the trainees back. All the trainees are so ready to go, but the lack of knowledge from the trainers is restraining. Elder Allen and I experienced the most overwhelming thing that evening. In a lesson we had I felt a little bit more of what the Savior has to bear. The Atonement of Jesus Christ literally applies to everyone without exception. 

Friday and Saturday I had no energy. It was two days back to back where lessons kept falling through, but it was a good experience to grow. It is really cool to see how much Elder Madsen has matured as a missionary. He does so good at keeping me accountable now instead of vice versa. We are teaching people like crazy, but we do not have anyone super close to baptism. 

Sunday I got the chance to speak in church about the restoration. Every fourth Sunday of every month a missionary is assigned to speak. They usually only do two speakers that Sunday, but this Sunday there were three speakers so I got to speak for only 10 minutes. Score! 

Another week in and another week to go. The Lord's work is going on and we are trying all we can to further the work. It will not stop! Time is running out for me. Time to get to it. Love you all.