Hey everyone!!
This week has been incredible! Transfers were this week, so I got Elder Banta! Nathan was pushed back, but he SHOULD be baptized this Friday! We had a huge finding week last week, so looking to teach a lot this week, as well as hopefully invite some people to get baptized! 🤞
Tuesday
P-day!! Started out by playing some pickleball obviously… then, we went and played some volleyball at the church! 🏐 Ashby and Rahn tagged along, so we got even more players! We then played some card games, Elder Balls got packed up, and the Hanna’s took us out to dinner! We went to a place with Sonoran hot dogs, which I’ve never had before, but they were SO GOOD!! 🌭 We talked to our friend Jim, who is unfortunately getting evicted… but hopefully we’ll be able to stay in contact with him! 😊
Wednesday
Transfer day!! Elder Banta didn’t actually arrive at the site till 3 pm since his previous area was very far away! So, I got to spend the morning and afternoon with the zone leaders, Elders West and Ashby! It was super cool, cause they are the YSA elders! 😮 So i spent most of my time on the University of Arizona campus, just talking to people! I learned that it’s called flowing, where you go around and just contact in public! 🗣 There was an LDS guy who helped us flow, and Elder West and I split off from him and Elder Ashby and talked to soooo many people! It was super fun, but very exhausting! 💤 Eventually, we went to the transfer site and I met up with Elder Banta! And HOLY GOAT!!! Elder Banta is so AWESOME!! Chill guy, but very hard-working (which is the perfect balance imo)! And he’s also super kind and funny too! We get along really well, so I’m sure we’ll do great work in our area! 😁 We went to Walmart together and got some food supplies for the week… Elder Balls’s (now Banta’s) bike was broken, and we had a pass-off lesson with the hermanas, so we were REALLY rushing! We didn’t have time to replace the tire, but luckily, the ZL’s gave us a ride to the lesson! With our bikes in the back! And we carried all the bike tools in our bag (including a huge bike pump) so we could hopefully fix it at this random complex after the lesson and bike back home! 🔧 The guy’s name was Randy, and he didn’t really seem toooo interested in the gospel. But we taught him about the restoration! Then we fixed Banta’ bike, and rode home! Banta got unpacked and all, and we went by some contacts! 🚲
Thursday
Pretty awesome day!! Banta and I started out by going by our friend James, and we put him on date! 🌊 So we’re pretty optimistic about him! We went through some more contacts… we gave a lady named Lori a blessing! ✨️ We were then fed Raisin Cane’s by Sister Barfield. 🐔😋 Then, we did Nathan’s baptismal interview, which went well, so he has the green light for baptism! Then, went to volleyball, and Shawn came along! Overall, super good day of work, it’s going pretty well!
Friday
An absolutely crazy day!! Elder Haslem unfortunately did not have a helmet, so we weren’t able to bike. So, it was a walking day! Honestly, it was so inspired. We found 21 people in that single day! It was all in talking to everyone. Haslem taught us a lot about trying to reach out to literally everyone we saw. It really changed the way we taught. We walked to lessons and found so many people along the way! Then, we went to Culver’s for lunch. We went knocking at another complex and did something called split-knocking, where we all split up and knocked doors. 🚪👊 We found even MORE people that way! And then we caught a bus to get to our dinner, the Yokoms! They drove us to our next lesson! And then we walked home. On the way walking home, we stopped by a Toyota dealership and found a bunch of guys who wanted us to come back and share more scriptures! 🚘✨️ Then walked all the way to our complex, and did a bunch of calls with Brother Smith, a guy in our complex!
Saturday
Really fun day! Started out walking around again and finding around… and then we planned Nathan’s baptism with Bro Macy (WML) using Claude… (ikr, not even ChatGPT?) We then met with Nathan and we watched a video of the story of Ammon.🗡💪 As we were about to bike out, and then this random guy asks us if he could give us “reading material…” so we were like uhhh sure bud and then he gave us these pamphlets that are from some Michigan pastor about “the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and then this guy proceeds to bash us for an hour about allll of his hate for the church… 😫 and then this random lady came up and tag-teamed us basically just ranting about how she was raised in the church so she had “experience” and I was like ugh this sucks. 😩 WHAT’S EVEN WORSE is that we were getting eaten by mosquitoes the entire time!! 😭 Call us the words of Christ cuz those bugs were absolutely FEASTING on us! 🦟 Anyways, after we got out of there, we had dinner with Shawn (our recent convert) and his friend Miguel! We went to Olive Garden, we wrote Shawn a birthday card, and all was well! 🍝 We even taught Miguel a little bit about the gospel, since he seemed interested!
Sunday
Church!! Started out with sacrament meeting… unfortunately only one of our friends (Samuel) actually showed up… but both our recent converts, Shawn and Gale, showed up too!! Samuel and Shawn had to leave early, so unfortunately the gospel foundations class fell through… ugh! So instead we went to Sunday School and then Elder’s Quorum. Nathan didn’t come to sacrament meeting, so we stopped by his house… he said his ear was hurting! Anyways, we studied, then went to flow in front of a grocery store, got kicked out of there, then stopped by our friend Randy who said he didnt wanna meet with us anymore cause apparently we lied to him 3 times?? He said the 1st lie was that we said that sister missionaries can’t go into the house with him when “he’s had sisters from the LDS come into his house before…” the 2nd lie was that we’re in the area for 6 weeks, when he “knows for a fact we’re out for 2 years,” and then he forgot the 3rd lie we told. So anyways we explained all that to him and it seemed like he kinda understood… 😇 we then had dinner with the Mason family, who is super cool! They had 4 daughters, who are all really talkative… i also did some magic tricks for the youngest one! And the food was SO GOOD! 😋
Monday
Pretty good day… started off going to a pass-off lesson with the hermanas with this guy named Andy! He was saying stuff about how bad stuff started to happen when he wanted to get baptized in the past, but Hermana Glenn bore a strong testimony about how important it is, so we’ll see where he goes! We also helped these people move out, since they were getting evicted. We then had district council with the new district! We have 8 people total, 5 of which are new! We visited Gale, which we talked about the Endowment and Patriarchal blessings with her. 🙏✨️ She wants both of those in January, a year after she’s been baptized! We then did some finding and knocking around, had dinner with the Figueroas (hamburgers + hot dogs + corn), so yum!! 🍔
TLDR
Holy i just realized i made this email hecka long… oops! Anyways, great week, and very draining! Elder Banta, my new companion, is so awesome! We’ve been doing really great work together, and I feel like we’ll be able to do some awesome stuff in this area! Nathan should be getting baptized this week FINALLY!
Anyways, see ya’ll later!
Elder Andrew Hyun
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