How Oft Will I Gather You: Week 35 (6/24/2019) Sleeping in the Clouds

This week has honestly flown by, but I will try to hit a couple of highlights.

On Tuesday, we saw the V__ family and read the first chapter of the Book of Mormon with them. I love the spirit and the feeling that they have in their home, it is so family centered, it is just awesome. We set up a time to do a chapel tour, so that they would be comfortable getting to the church on Sunday.

On Thursday nights we usually play volleyball with some members, but the stake had organized a rescue visit night, so we had 13 missionaries and the high council go out to see members who needed strengthening in the Twin City ward. It was good, I went with the old Stake President, and we went to visit a sister who had some very honest and difficult reasons for being away from the church. It is always so sad to see the actions of one person push someone away from the church.

On Thursday we also had our zone conference, which went well. Perhaps the biggest thing at zone conference is that we got new mattresses! I am so very comfortable laying on my memory foam right now. Our old mattresses were like rocks. It is awesome how you can get mattresses compressed into boxes anymore. It was pretty cool to roll it out and have it expand.

Saturday we were supposed to have our church tour with the V__ family, but they didn't show. When we went by, it turned out their close friend had had a stroke, so they were taking care of him. We also found out, to our dismay, that E__ was going back to work at the refineries...80 hr weeks, including Sundays. So we don't know how the future will hold.

They did say they would be at church this Sunday, though, which we were excited about. The services started with no sign of them, though. About a half hour in, though, we noticed we had missed a call from them at the beginning of services. They couldn't find the address. So that was really disappointing for us, we were really looking forward to it, and we feel bad for them since they made the effort and weren't able to come.

I played the piano in primary again...still the best calling in the church.

We also attended a Methodist church with a recent convert. She used to go there, and sang in their church band, so they asked her to come help with this worship service. She did a very good job, and it was a good prayer service.

Well, I know this was a pretty sparse email, but honestly not a whole lot ended up happening this week. We did missionary work, obviously, but it felt like people weren't home 24/7. But some weeks are just like that.

With love,

Elder DeFord