Top of the morning to y'all (unless you live in Italy)!
Believe it or not, it has been another week and it is once again the best day of week: p-day. It's been a pretty fire week, so I'll share a few of the things that have been happening.
On Wednesday, we said goodbye to our crappy car, Margaret since she's too old for the church's high standards. And now we have this new sexy car that literally drives itself on the freeway and runs half on electricity. I've started making opinions on what cars I will buy when I get home in 20 years, and you ain't it Chevy. Our new car is a Toyota and it's so much better.
On Friday, it started absolutely pouring. We walk into a stranger's house to try and teach a lesson and when we walked out the clouds were self destructing. My comp and I ran for Veronica (our new car). We run one way, but the gate is locked so we have to run all the way around this apartment complex in the rain. Thank you mom for buying me pants that can be thrown into a washing machine, because the bottoms were covered in mud. On the plus side, we got a return appointment with the lady we were chatting with.
On Saturday we helped a member family in our ward moving some logs. We were towing them with his truck then rolling them into place. One of the logs accidentally rolled over my hand, and one of my fingers hurts like crazy to this day. Signing the letter 'E' hurts like crazy, so I'm glad I'm in English work for the time being. My finger isn't swollen, so I'm guessing it's just the damage to my skin that's hurting, not broken bones.
Later I got to exchange with Elder D just for fun. We got to visit all the people on the border of our area and teach one of our friends together. And what I've learned so far is that all missionaries older than 17 months only think about marriage. That's literally all I hear about, their plans after they yeet back to Utah.
On Sunday we got a text during church that one of our friends that we've been trying to contact is at this FFA fundraiser. So we jumped on the opportunity to finally talk to him. This is gonna be one of the highlights of the mission (until I forget), my comp and I both were in full suits from church and wearing sunglasses. We walk into the rodeo grounds looking for our friend. Boy those stares were hillarious. Everyone else around us were in jeans and t-shirts, and here's these 2 guys in suits just walking through. We eventually found him and got a return appointment with his family.
That night we got to drive to Chula Vista for an awesome devotional. A bunch of recent converts told their story, the missionaries got to sing the mission song and we got fed cookies. Nothing is better than that. The missionaries were the last ones to leave the building, and as we left you could just see the lines of Chevy's going in every direction (with the occasional Toyota and Nissan).
One thing that really stuck out to me is that some of our trials in this life come from Satan's fear of us. Just as Joseph Smith writes in JSH:20, he knows that we can be great disturbers to his kingdom. We have the power chip off his kingdom to build up the kingdom of God, and the adversary knows our potential. It's just too bad that we can't be swayed. We have our roots in the power of the temple and through our covenants. "Fear not, I am with thee so be not dismayed."
Yesterday I had the opportunity to exchange with Elder M. He's only been out 6 months but he's pretty amazing. Since his area touches the Mexican border, we had to go down there. We found all the people down there and visited them. Before we had to come back up, we went and took pictures right next to the wall. It's crazy to think that just a few years ago I was by the same border but down in Texas. Same winding road but now I'm with a companion instead of my family.
What a great week, when I write it down like this it seems like a lot happened when I feel like last P-day was yesterday. I'm slowly starting to get into the swing of things, figuring out what I'm doing. I made some real peanut butter cookies this week to make up for the shortbread I made last week so I accomplished everything I needed to this week.
Have an amazing week, tell the devil to get lost and keep being amazing.
-- Elder Coxson
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