Elder Skyler Rushton takes a selfie
The rain is coming down in buckets. That describes the last three days Perfectly… Thank goodness we have a car now!!! So I did not get transfered, but I did get a new companion! Elder Bennett from Sandy, Utah! Believe it or not, he is my first companion from Utah. Crazy eh? But he is SWEET, he is such an awesome missionary, this transfer is going to be a good one!
So prior to Thursday’s transfer meeting, not really anything happened. Elder Barker packed his bags and the Assistants phoned us to say that we were getting a car! My heart exploded with happiness and I think my feet will be eternally grateful! I don’t think I’ve ever walked so much in my life then I have in the last three months hahaha. But it has kept me in shape… But now it’s warming up so we can go running again. Through the forest! So that will be fun.
Transfer meeting was excellent! I’m going to miss President Tilleman’s trainings soooo much when he leaves in July. He is just so good at being a mission president, it’s crazy! He trained at a recent Mission President seminar and told us that when the work hastened (which started about 10 months ago) we have been having 4X the baptisms, 12X the number of new investigators and about 6X the number of member present lessons. In his e-mail every week President Tilleman sends out, he tells us the numbers from our missions previous week. So I’ve been able to witness first hand the hastening from the numbers point of view and it’s incredible. I wish I could just send you the copy of one of his e-mails, but it’s against the rules; so you’ll just have to believe me!
So Elder Bennett used to sell security systems for Vivint back home and then pest control in Missiouri. He is crazy good at finding, which is awesome because that’s what makes it possible for us to teach! Anyways, so he’s been here three days and we’ve already found 18 new investigators. It’s going to be a good transfer ! So we were out finding yesterday and three times we knocked on someone’s door and they didn’t want to talk to us because their house was flooding. I have literally never seen in rain so hard, for so long. There are rivers in the streets, the sewers are flooding over their grates and the fields are turning into swamps… and it’s still raining today!. Oh well, we have a car so I’m just going to count my many blessings.
We knocked on this really old guys door and from the second he answered it to the second we left, he was giving us a sales pitch for USANA (the multi-level marketing company stationed in Utah!). He tried to recruit us, sell us stuff and convince us that we were going to die by the time we were 30 if we didn’t take the dumb vitamins he was trying to sell us. So we gave him a picture of Jesus and said, “We just want to talk about this guy.” But he wouldn’t stop talking about vitamins, so we just left –haha. Another guy we talked to answered the door holding the sword from Lord of the Rings so that was a little sketchy. Turns out he was just role-playing with some of his friends… it was weird. But he became a new investigator so we’ll probably be seeing more of that stuff this week. But it will make for good stories.
So I figured I would share those two stories with you this week because they made me laugh! On a more spiritual note, I had really cool insight I wanted to share with you all this week! It is Alma chapter 5, the whole chapter. It is one of my favorite chapters! Alma the younger is calling the people of Zarahemla to repentance and he throws down! The spirit taught me the other day that Alma the younger totally knows what to say to the people because he himself used to be one of the “vilest of sinners.” Elder Christofferson told us when he was here that, “You can learn a lot from somone who has had their back up against a wall.” So that made me think of Alma! He is teaching them as one that has been in their shoes and is now the high priest of the church, really the man closest to God on the Earth. There are so many things that he says that I just love so if you really want to feel like you need to repent, read Alma 5 haha. It’s great!
Well hopefully you loved all the details of my week, if you didn’t, you probably didn’t read this far in my e-mail haha. I hope you all know how much I love all you! Being on my mission has really taught me that loving everyone is the key to being happy in life. It has really made me grateful for all of the friends and family that I have back home that I already loved before I came out! When I look in the mirror, I don’t really look all that different (yet, at least haha), but I certainly feel different. And I love it! I am so grateful for the chance that I’ve had to serve my mission thus far and it is hands down the best desicion I have made in my life because it has changed me sooooo much. I know that there will still be parts that suck, and there are definitely days that I absolutely hate being a missionary, but overall I have absolutely loved my mission and the person it is shaping me into! I just thought I would let you all know that!
Have a wonderful week family and friends! May the Spirit of the Lord be with you! Love you all! Bye!
–Elder Rushton The Third
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