Thursday, March 26, 2015

The Golden Birthday (03/23/2015)

Oklahoma had their Spring Break this past week. Unlike Utah, they get an entire week of vacationing and partying. It wasn't just the schools, the university had theirs as well. Utah should emulate Oklahoma's example. It made missionary work pretty tough this week, but we had some amazing miracles.

We got back in contact with Memery. Apparently Zavior got a virus that made him pass out whenever he stood up. We gave her David A. Bednar's "Come and See" to help her get a better idea of why members of the Church share the gospel. We also had an amazing miracle with our investigator, Mario. He's been working as a manager at a casino/gas station for the past couple months, and he's been swamped with working overtime hours. He can't come to church on Sundays because of it. We can barely meet with him because we have to catch him home at just the right time, and even if we set an appointment he gets called into work sometimes. So our appointment with him on Wednesday was a miracle in and of itself. We taught him the Ten Commandments. Since keeping the Sabbath Day Holy is one of the commandments, we had a good discussion about his work life. In the middle of the lesson, he stopped us and told us that the next time he went to work he would get on his knees and pray about the Book of Mormon and pray to have a good day at work. Our Spirit radars shot way up!!! It was a super powerful lesson. 

Things with Rusty are going well. He's still sober. He went to Book of Mormon class and brought up some concerns about the devil. Those are the best kind of concerns. Everyone should worry about him! But when we apply the steps of the Doctrine of Christ we can overcome those temptations. Rusty pointed out to us that all that is definitely easier said then done. One thing I learned from that lesson is that we always need to be watching ourselves and being careful that we don't fall into Satan's temptations. The phrase that comes to mind is "Watch, therefore, that ye may be ready."

All right. It's time. The birthday: It's almost been like the birthday celebration that never ends! The day of, the day before, and the day after the 21st didn't seem like it was going to end. On Friday I got a birthday card signed by all the Ada missionaries and a gallon box of Goldfish from the sister missionaries. I'm "The Goldfishinator" according to the sisters :) Then after district meeting we went out to lunch to Prairie Kitchen, and afterwards the waiter gave me a chocolate brownie with ice cream and fudge. Gosh it was yummy! And the fudge was BUBBLING hot! On the 21st we went to the church to do some stuff while the other elders took the car to Stratford. After that we got back to our apartment to find balloons taped all over the front door--another surprise from the sisters. We went over to the bishop's house to visit some of his kids while he was in Utah. They found out it was my birthday and they served us sparkling grape juice. Later on we had dinner with the Schuettes, and for dessert they made a massive chocolate ding-dong cake with white filling in the middle and gaunache on the outside. #CheckSpelling. And it was TASTY. We went to a baptism afterwards and on of the counselors in the bishopric got everyone in the ward that was there to sing happy birthday, and then he gave me a cake, which we ate the next day during ward correlation. And the package from mom was amazing!

So the past week has been pretty good. Transfer calls are this Sunday, and President tells us that six areas will be closing this transfer with 7 or 8 more areas closing my going-home transfer. Guess which area in the Oklahoma City Mission has the most sets of missionaries? Ada. So pray that none of us have to close an area! 

Elder Garner

#ThePlotThickens #21AndLegal

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