May 6th, 2024 - 37th Email - Craziest exchanges of all time

 Hey

So not a ton happened this week but I got a couple funny stories

We had some really good Spirit-filled lessons so it's super cool especially since my Spanish is getting better and stuff

I even took over driving from Elder Jones after over a month of him driving lol

Ok so the first story was on Thursday

We do this thing called traveling ap's which basically is just a companionship that goes around and does exchanges with everybody (they're actually doing away with them after this transfer) and our exchange was with Elder Shumway on Thursday. But we barely got any time to do actual missionary work with him. We had zone council which we had to be there at 10:30 (and it's a half hour drive to palm desert), which lasted until noon, then we had lunch, and then we did a bishop's storehouse service until like 3 (a food drive the church runs to give less fortunate people food, basically where we collect people's orders and stuff).

Usually people pull up to get their own orders put in their car after we get everything they need, but the borrego springs elders just take it all down themselves cuz it's so far away. But only one of them was in borrego last transfer, and he's new, so they didn't think to bring up two trucks. So elder shumway had to take his truck (brand new 2024 chevy silverado by the way that thing is insane) and because salton city is so far away we didnt see him for another hour and a half lol

Then we hung out for dinner and had a lesson

But then we went to the church building for english class, and then nobody showed up for english class and we ended up blowing up a bunch of balloons as a service to help set up for an activity on Friday

And then obispo asked us to help him give a recent convert the priesthood

And then finally past 8 pm we got out to do some more visits

I felt kinda bad because it wasnt a very conventional day of missionary work but it was still pretty fun

The activity on Friday was cool it was a mother's day dinner and we brought a live mariachi band and we got to know them a bit after and they were asking us questions about the church and like "why do you speak spanish" so that was epick

We also got to be waiters for the activity which was actually super fun

Then we had a crazy exchange Friday night

So in my zone there are 9 elder companionships, and between Friday and Saturday there were 8 planned exchanges and reexchanges. Only 7 actually happened though because everyone got home too late. We exchanged with the borrego spanish.

So to draw a picture of how it all went down

There's an apartment up in palm desert for elders, our apartment in Indio, another apartment pretty close to us, and then the house down in Salton city where the borrego springs elders live (they dont live in borrego springs we just call them that)

Elder Morgan, who lives in palm desert, was there on Friday on am exchange with Elder Owens who lives in the apartment next to ours, and he was planning on going down to borrego english on saturday for an exchange. The other elders in my apartment, elder arvidson, cutler, and pittman, were on an exchange with borrego english on friday already. Elder pittman was down there with elder soto and elder taylor was in our apartment in the trio. Elder Fuller, elder morgan's companion, was with Elder Bodell, elder owens' companion on bike.

Basically our apartment turned into a big meetup spot.

-elder morgan and owens pulled up to our apartment first, elder morgan dropped off elder owens at our apartment and picked up elder cutler and taylor and jones and they drove down to the exchange spot in mecca for borrego. Then elder fuller and bodell pull up and elder bodell and owens went home. So elder arvidson, elder fuller, and I were in our apartment chilling waiting for the others to get back. It's like 11 pm and we have no idea where they are. They didnt have a sim card with them (lol) so we couldnt call them, they didnt have wifi. So we called borrego, and they were working out and not ready to leave their house yet. So we were just like "ok yall are gonna be super late we're going to bed"

Elder Pittman, Soto, Barlow (the spanish borrego elder I was exchanging with), and Cutler got to our apartment at like midnight. It was weird waking up and realizing there were 7 of us in our apartment. We asked them what happened in the morning and they said they just ended up driving all the way down to salton city because they were taking forever and there were 8 missionaries in the house down there and they were super close to just having all of them sleep over. But they didnt do that, they just drove back up. Elder Soto and fuller immediately drove up to palm desert and it was all good again. Then that night was super hype because we went to the gas station in mecca to reexchange and there were 7 of us there lol because of all the exchanges that happened

Yeah I really hope that doesn't happen again

Also the weather has been super good the last couple days it was super got earlier last week and knowing it's just going to get worse is weird lol

We had a baptism planned for yesterday for these three kids but it didn't end up happening. We're going to work really hard to get them baptized, so please pray for them they're really sweet

Ok that's all missions are crazy sometimes behind the scenes but in the end it all works out lol I love the awesome work I'm doing and the change I see in those I teach

Ok picture time

-cool sky

-mariachi band

-drinks from a gas station

-cool pic near the salton sea (I was totally holding that book of mormon backwards)