Happy Halloween!!

 Hola,

Well I'm back! This was a pretty good week. I feel like the days are slow but then once I get to P-Day I realize how fast it's going. I love it here in Las Vegas now. The weather is absolutely amazing again. I used to yell every single time I walked outside in the summer, "who would live here??" But now the weather is perfect. It's like in the high 60s and low 70s and occasionally will get a little higher than that. It's so nice. For the next 6 months it's going to be the best mission ever and then it's going to turn into a nightmare again. Hopefully I won't be on bike again by the time summer rolls around. 

The Willows Ward is definitely a very nice ward and finding new people to teach can be a little over overwhelming, however, the people are awesome. Everyone is so friendly. Missionaries in the past haven't really had a lot of success here so the members are a little hesitant to work with us (which if you really if you think about that doesn't make sense, if the past Missionaries didn't have success, wouldn't you want to help the new missionaries and help them have success rather than not work with the new ones?) I'm in this place called South Summerlin in Las Vegas and it's so nice. In my area I also have downtown Summerlin which is like this huge mall place. But president doesn't really like us going there so I've only been there once. That's actually where the baseball game was a couple transfers ago. We are teaching some people that are promising and could get baptized. Elder Plaster and I found them and they are cool. Their names are Angela and Nathan. We are going to see if we can put them on date in our next lesson. 

Elder Plaster and I get along very well. Almost too well. It's weird. We are so similar it's ridiculous. We both are going to study computer science after the mission and start coding. He is going to BYU Hawaii and I'm going to BYU Idaho but I'm trying to convince him to go to Idaho. We have the same exact sense of humor and sometimes we'll say the exact same thing at the same time. We both really liked choir and have a lot of fun memories from men's choir. We both did the exact same things in high school and played the same games and watched the same TV shows. We both worked at a pizza place before the mission and were pizza delivery drivers for a little bit. AND for the cherry on top, our birthdays are two days apart. The only difference is he is from Spokane Washington (like Elder Rehkow, and no, they didn't know each other). I've been so blessed to have awesome companions. Elder Plaster is so fun and I hope I stay with him for a couple transfers. 

Well, I crashed my bike again. Yeah this time it was 100% my fault. It was really dumb.

I was riding down a hill and since Elder Plaster and I are goofing off, I thought it was a good idea to see if I could ride my bike without any hands and standing up on it. I stood on the pedals and then I let go. For about 1 second it was pretty neat and then I lost control and ate asphalt. Out of the whole sidewalk, I fell into the only bush that had been near it. Any other time and I would've gotten seriously hurt. Instead I just happened to completely destroy a bush. I totally nailed it and tore a giant hole into that bush. I remember Elder Plaster was screaming at first and then he started laughing historically. I started laughing too and I was shaking pretty bad because of the adrenaline. I was stuck in the bush still under my bike and needed help getting out. Elder Plaster had to help me out. It was honestly a crazy crash and I should've gotten hurt pretty bad. 

The bush before I landed in it

The bush after I climbed out of it

Just the other day we had this cool experience where we were walking inside the church and we were going to do some weekly planning when there was this guy standing outside the church at a bus stop. I stopped Elder Plaster and told him we needed to go talk with him. We went outside and introduced ourselves and started a conversation. His name is Sal and he is from Saudi Arabia. As he was going to the bus he gave us his phone number and we set up a time to meet. We met in the church building and did a church tour kind if thing then sat down and talked for a little bit. He is Muslim and we basically just answered his questions. He asked so many great questions. We eventually taught the whole restoration and plan of salvation out of order and then taught the law of chastity and the law of the fast. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he was super excited to read it. It was a pretty cool experience to talk with someone outside and then teach them the next day. The fact he actually showed up and was interested is pretty cool too. You know the Church of Jesus Christ and Muslim theology are actually super similar. I learned so much from Sal. It was super cool. One of the major differences though is he believes that God doesn't use prophets anymore. We teach that God doesn't change and he uses the same things he did when Jesus Christ was on the earth. Like apostles and prophets.

-Ephesians 2:19-20

"19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;" 

We teach that miracles are still here and God still speaks to us through his ordained mouthpieces, the prophet. They don't believe that. Their last prophet was Muhammad. There are a lot of really cool similarities though. 

I feel like I've been learning a lot about other religions recently. So there is this Jewish synagogue in my area and we pass by it all the time on our bikes. Then one day the security guards waved us down and talked with us for a little bit. They were members of the Church of Jesus Christ and just wanted to say hi. We got some sodas and they told us a lot of cool stuff about the synagogue. I'll just share one highlight that I thought was neat. They have this sacred ceremony before they enter into a kind of chapel room. They get completely wet and wash and anoint themselves to make sure they're clean before they enter the presence of God. It's called a Mikveh (hopefully I spelled that right). Basically what it sounds like is baptism. The security guards say it is SUPER similar to baptism and they explain in the ceremony that it has been on Jewish tradition for so long. Before the new Testament and into the old. Pretty cool to think about. I thought I'd share another scripture because it's super cool to pair these two things together. 

-John 1:23-25 

"23 He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.

24 And they which were sent were of the Pharisees.

25 And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?"

So to explain this scripture, it is when John the Baptist is baptizing people in the river and the Pharisees came to him (basically almost everyone at that time was Jewish and these guys in particular did not like Jesus or John the Baptist) and said basically "what authority do you have to baptize?" They knew what baptism was even before John the Baptist started baptizing, or else they would said "what the bruh are you doing in that river?" Just an interesting thing to think about.

To end the week off we got to have a Halloween party in my apartment. On Halloween we had to be back in out apartments by 6:00 pm so we got everyone in our apartment complex to come to my apartment. It was sweet. (Don't worry I got permission from the zone leaders, I'm not disobedient) it was honestly so awesome to end the week off on a highlight like that. Life is super good right now.

Well, that concluded my week I guess. I love you all so much. Thank you so much for reading my emails. It really means everything to me!

Sincerely,

Elder Pack