5/23-5/29/16: 91 Bags of Wood on the Wall...

when we finished with the shoveling of the wood things, I put the
barrel above my head and I felt like donkey kong. So I had to have
picture taken

"Do you think outward attractiveness, your dress size, or popularity
make the slightest difference in your worth to the One who created the
universe?
He loves you not only for who you are this very day but also for
the person of glory and light you have the potential and the desire to
become.
More than you could ever imagine, He wants you to achieve your
destiny--to return to your heavenly home in honor." -Dieter F Uchtdorf

God looks are who we can become, and who we are in our hearts. Dress
size (or I guess like..... Clothing size) doesn't make a difference to
him, and I don't think it should make a difference to us. If we all
see each other as the children of God that we all are inside, nothing
that this world pretends matters will actually matter. Look at others,
through gods eyes.
Do something for someone this week! Be a kind person, be the type of
person that you know God wants you to be!

5/23
We had a sweet zone breakfast with the stake president in the morning-
he wanted to get to know all of us (even there is only two of us that
are new) and to tell us his vision about this transfer. Then,
president Bingham had us all go sign his wall. He just has this huge
wall in his house where he was all the missionaries that either stay
in his home or serve in the Helena zone sign their name and say
something on the wall. It was super cool to see the whole huge wall of
names of missionaries who used to serve in the zone. Then, with it
being preparation day and all, my companion and I went up and played
some ping pong with one of the zone leaders (Elder Cardiff... from
Kingman. AZ FOR THE WIN! I actually found out that like almost half of
the zone that is serving is coming from Arizona, which is pretty
sweet. We have two from Mesa, one from flagstaff, and then Kingman and
Tolleson. It's cool to see how many members there really are in AZ!)
Ping pong was fun, although it welt weird because I hadn't played
since like 3 transfers ago haha. I'm not any better at it than before,
unless I was going against Elder Merrell, then somehow my skill level
increased by like 9000. Oh well, who knows!
Not gonna lie, besides that the day was kinda boring. We played a
little bit of podball, but only for like an hour. The gym is super
small here, so there isn't a ton of room to run around and whatnot,
but we have fun with it. The rest of the day was fun of wandering
around trying to find someone to teach, as it seems most our days are
filled with.
5/24
Well.... Tuesday was an adventure. Lots of service... But in an
unsuspecting way haha. The day started off seemingly normal.
Showers... But while we showered, a large pool of water began to
gather on the floor all over the bathroom. Thinking that maybe it was
just like sower steam runoff stuff, we though nothing of it. But then
the carpet in the hallway began to get soaked, and the carpet in the
room next to the bathroom. Then to get worse, the water smelled like
the sewer... 

while we were cleaning out our room at the Wardells we found this dinosaur

Making the ENITRE downstairs smell like a sewer!
Realizing that what was happening was probably and issue, elder
Merrell and I decided that it would be a good idea to let sister
Wardell know that something was going on. Well, needless to say she
freaked out a little bit. She ran downstairs a little freaked out,
turned off the toilet and the the water line to the hot water heater.
She called her husband (who just so HAPPENED to be out of town for the
week...) and was told to call someone in the ward who would know how
to help. So he came over and he looked at some stuff, and from what he
said it looked like there was something happening with the septic
pump. Yeah I guess we just blew it up. Oh well.
So we spent a majority of the morning and most of the day ripping out
carpets, moving furniture, and vacuuming up water for the Wardells. It
was an... Interesting morning, to say the least.

Well as we were finishing up with that, we got a call from a sister in
the ward. She needed some help shoveling woodchips out of a playground
area into bags so that she could move them easier. Well we went there
and it turns out that we were the only ones doing it. 16 yards of bark
chips, filling one bag to weigh about 90-100lbs. Fun. We spent a good
4 hours shoveling, and we got just under halfway done. Hooray. It
physically exhausted Elder Merrell and I, so we decided it was time to
take a nap.

 those bags were BIG. And ya know... We filled 91 OF THEM!!! I was
laying on like 4 there.

After that we just kinda wandered around Tracting, looking for less
actives, and finding more people to teach!
5/25
In personal study this morning, Elder Merrell read a scripture in Alma
31 that talks about how the missionaries went out with no thought of
where they would eat, sleep, or work. They just went ready to serve!
Well... I am broke. I literally have like $2 in my bank account right
now, and all I have to eat is 2 bags of cereal, a Half gallon of milk,
and some ramen noodles. Even so, I am not worried that I will die. I
know everything will work out somehow!
Well we are finding that as we are going out with no thought to where
we eat, things are working out. As well, we had to leave the Wardells
yesterday so they could get everything cleaned and whatnot. (We think
it's a permanent thing, but we don't know.) So also, we had no place
to live. Well, the lord provides. Every meal for most of this week was
set and prepare for us, and we have a place to live! All of which we
had no idea about as we woke up on in the morning.
IT
WAS
FANTASTICALLY
AMAZING
It was super cool to see the lord provide. Besides that we had another
elder who was getting mid-transferred with us all day, so we finished
the service of the wood chip stuff, and we spent most of the rest of
the day waiting for the mission leadership training to get out so we
could send this other Elder off with his new zone leaders. It was
super cool! The service was still super tiring, and so me and my
companion and a hard time doing things for the rest of the day, we
tried, but it wa ruff.
5/26
Another good weekly planning session. We planned at the members house
that we are staying with, and while we were there is started to
thunder and rain a TON so we opened all the windows and planned to the
sound of nature outside. It was super calming, and it made planning
less of a drag!
We had a super sweet miraculous dinner again, someone just text us and
asked us if we wanted to come over! It was SICK.
After dinner we biked around A TON to visit some people. We biked
almost 4 miles completely up hill, and so needless to say we were
pretty much done with life by the end.
We set some goals during planning to be better at following the spirit
while Tracting, and as we tried to do that Tracting was great! I was
able to really become someone who I almost wasn't! In the 2 hours we
tracted, I personally handed out 5 restoration pamphlets and like 4
copies of the Book of Mormon! It was a great kind of out-of-body
experience. I really almost felt like I wasn't even walking around,
like I was just kinda watching from the end of the street. It was
super weird, but SUPER COOL!
5/27
We had zone training Friday morning, and that was cool. Talked a lot
about the gifts of charity and humility. It was super cool. Also,
apparently I am the first person to be in the Helena zone that is
proficient at playing the piano in like 3 transfers. I am still
finding out just how really much of a blessing the talents I have are,
and how much they bless others. I guess you never really realize until
other tell you...right? Haha
After zone training, we got a call from the Wardells telling us that
we needed to pack up all of our stuff so that they could tear up the
carpet in our room. (Apparently as we walked around all morning on
Tuesday we just like carried the bacteria from the septic water.) so
we went to their house and packed. I feel like I just got here and now
I'm packing again.. Hmmm...
While we were packing we got our monthly call from the mission home,
talking to us about during in our driving reports, and talking about
who did the best on the last months. Well I usually don't care much
for the driving reports awards, because I am just kinda like whatever
man. I turn mine in and it looks good enough for me haha. But this
time, I WON. "The Gold star goes to- Elder Hansen and Elder
Wallgreen!" Huh? Wait... I was Elder Hansen's companion last month...
HE MEANT ME?! I WON! Suddenly my "not caring" attitude like
disappeared. I don't even know what winning meant, BUT I WON! Hahah
I'm such a loser.
5/28
We got a call today that a less active member and his no member wife
needed some help moving today, so we spent the day help gin them take
a bunch of couches a freezers and TVs and stuff up some stairs. It was
cool to help, and I even got to talk about MTG with Logan Strang (son
of the WML) which was sweet!
After that we had nothing to do for the rest of the day, so we just
kinda walked around talking to people for hours around the lake.
Oh yeah.... We like by lake Helena now. Not a very good view form the
house, but everything out here is friggin gorgeous! But anyway that
was basically all we did for the rest of the day. I'm finding out that
this area is going to be full of doing a lot of the same things OVER
and OVER and OVER again! Oh well... Imma be real good at finding after
this.. Right?
5/29
Church today was interesting. Just after sacrament meeting bishop came
up to us and asked us if we would be willing to teach the youth Sunday
school class, as none of the teachers were present. Well...... Sure!
Missionaries were supposed to be good at that... Right? It went okay..
About as okay as a youth lesson could go. We just kinda rambled on
about president Monson for like and hour.. I hope they got something
out of it haha
While Tracting today we ran into this dude that has a sweet hot rod
garage. He wasn't interested in talking with us about the church, but
he was more than happy to let us into his garage and show us his hot
rods. He talked with us for like 30 minutes about the cars, and what
kind of work he did on them. It was sweet!
Church- last minute youth lesson
Hot rod garage

To answer the one question I've been getting a lot lately- yeah Elder
Merrell and I are actually getting along GREAT! We have found that
happy medium where we take a ton of humor into just about everything
that we do, while also taking the work seriously. He doesn't take most
things I say seriously, which is nice.... I guess haha. We get a long
great and I really can tell we are going to be great friends for a
long time!