18 Months

Springfield Zone

     Hey everybody, how are things going? I hope y'all are doing good and living life to the fullest. This past week started out on a dreary kind of note, but it has been a good week anyway. It feels like it has been a little roller coaster going up and down, but it's been good.

     Monday was a bummer of a day. It snowed the night before so President said no driving, but we had to keep our P-Day on Monday which kinda stunk. I'm glad I'm in an apartment with three other missionaries because that made things a little bit easier. We played some Monopoly, Uno, and Scrabble and then went to the gym to workout for awhile (probably the highlight of the day). At about dinner time we were told we could drive again, just in time for P-Day to be over, so we headed over to the office because we had to get some things done. One of those was the Warrior Report, our missions' little newsletter thing, but right as we were saving it something happened and the computer had a spazz attack or something and we lost the whole thing! Then we got a call from the AP's saying they needed us to run them a key because someone had locked their keys in the car while the car was still running....I don't know how you can do that, but it takes skill.
     Tuesday morning we headed into the office to finish the Warrior Report, finally got it done. Then we picked up Elder Frew and Elder Bunn and we went shopping because we couldn't yesterday. Elder Finlayson and I had dinner with a family, the Griffin's, and their little girls even played some violin and piano for us. It was pretty cool. Then we had a lesson with an investigator named Raymond, neither of us had met him before so we went in guns blazin! No not really, but he's a sweet guy and we had a good lesson with him, he said he'd be baptized so that's pretty cool.
     Wednesday was our Zone Training and it was pretty good, they said some good things and it didn't take forever. It was a lot easier to learn from and take things away from it because of the length it was. Went to lunch with the AP's and switched vehicles because we had to pick up some mattresses that don't fit in the van, dang queen mattresses. We didn't finish so after dinner we went back down to Alexandria to finish up, but we didn't even finish then, switched back vehicles with the AP's and headed home.
     On Thursday we went into the office to catch up on some work that has piled up a little bit and we got most of it done. We have this big printout of the number 300 and everyone that gets baptized we put a picture of them up on it, 300 is our mission baptism goal, we have missed doing that the last two weeks so we had to get that done. After that we drove down to the Mt. Vernon Zone and did some work picking things up at one apartment and dropping some off at another. We have these lists from apartment inspections of stuff people need and stuff we need to take out of apartments, so that was what we were doing most of the day. We also checked by a member's home who wants to rent their basement to the church for a missionary apartment and the senior couple that is in charge of handling that sort of thing, asked us to go by and check it out and see how we felt about it, and see if we thought it would work or not.
     Friday we went up to Reston and moved the Hermanas there to a new apartment. It took a couple of trips and a little longer than we were planning on, but that's alright. There was a REALLY heavy desk that we had to move, we got it over to their new apartment and we all decided it would be better if we didn't try to take it up the stairs because it wouldn't fit through the door of their study room anyway (We measured!). Elder Finlayson and I decided to take it to a set of elders who were close that lived on the bottom level so we could just lug it in their back door, way easier that way. When we were done with that we headed back to the office to do more work there. After dinner we tried to see four former investigators but none of them were home, I guess it just wasn't a good night. We had stuff in the van from the move we needed to take to the storage shed anyway, so that's how we ended the night. I tried to do some ab wheel roll-outs in the back of the van on the way out of the storage units and it was super hard! Elder Finlayson was driving like a maniac trying to make me fall over and I almost did a couple times, it was hilarious!
     Saturday Elder Frew and I went on exchanges together because it was our 18 month mark. Crazy crazy. We went to Manassas and then we went over to Alexandria to finish cleaning out an apartment of a senior couple who have gone home. Loaded up and headed to the storage shed, unloaded and went to dinner with the Maeger's who are awesome. Sister Maeger cut my hair after dinner and while that was happening Elder Frew, Justin (Maeger's son, he's 9 or 10) and Brother Maeger were in the other room trying to shoot a moth with dart guns. It was super funny and every once in a while a dart would come flying into the kitchen where we were. Anyway we headed back to finish the apartment for sure and we did, we got it done. Our van also got towed so that wasn't too fun, it was late at night too so that was a bummer, we got it back though and finally got home.

Plan of Salvation we drew for Primary

     Sunday was good, church was tough for me because I was super tired, but it was still pretty good. After church we had missionary correlation and then ward council so I was even more tired after that. We got a call from Elder Frew and Elder Bunn saying they needed some help, they had two lessons scheduled for the same time, so we went on exchanges again and Elder Frew and I headed down to Manassas for one of them. It didn't end up working out because the guy wasn't there but we had fun. We met up with the other guys and went to the office because Elder Finlayson and I had to do key indicator reporting with the AP's. It went good and we got done the earliest we have since I've been here so that was nice.
     Well it was another busy week and I don't think I'm going to have one that isn't busy the whole time I'm in the office, that's okay though it's good to be busy. Things have been looking up in our area too, so God knows how hard we are working. I hope y'all are doing well and staying happy! Thanks for all the help and support, it means a lot. Sorry for the late email we went to Mt. Vernon and then dinner, so I didn't really have time to send emails, my bad! Anyway have a great week!

     ~ Elder Brady