The Temple and Zone Conferences

 This week has been way out of routine. I've had my entire schedule full with a variety of different activities. I'm just gonna do a day by day of them since that seems the easiest:

Tuesday: Drove down to Montgomery because one of the spanish Elders in my area needed a new recommend from the Mission President. This was a 3 hour journey and Montgomery is a super sketchy part of Alabama. After we got the reccomend, we went tracting (or door to door) for 3 hours in 39 degree weather. It sucked a lot, my toes were frozen. The extra humidity makes that coldness sink into your bones, it's not a pleasant feeling. But of course, it was good for me....

Wednesday: Temple trip in Birmingham, Alabama which is the only temple in the whole state. This was in the same direction as Montgomery so we just stayed the night with some other Elders. This temple is super fricken tiny and the temple staff was so shocked with how many people we had going at once. It was a really dope and spiritual experience, it felt even more spiritual  because I was able to put my investigators and my mother on the prayer roll. Felt more meaningful that way.

Thursday: Service project consisting of painting 5 different rooms at a Women's shelter. Let me tell ya, my arms are in pain and aching. The muscles you have to use while painting were ones I don't use all that much so I'm still very sore. But hey, I learned a decently useful life skill I guess. We were there for about 8 hours so you could imagine how fat the nap I took was afterwards (our mission allows those sometimes).

Friday: Zone Conference, it was super long. Its basically just a bunch of training and new information to keep us safe and doing our purpose. My mission president, President Allred, is a very powerful and intimidating speaker. There's no WAY I was gonna try and snooze while he was speaking, he's just that type of guy. He stares right into your soul as he talks about being exactly obedient because he knows who's lacking. Super spiritual experience, I met a lot of cool people who already knew me because my last name spreads like wildfire. Let's just hope I'm what they were expecting for a person with that dope of a last name. 

Saturday: Went to Lamberts again, that one restaurant that chucks rolls at you that I mentioned before? There was a bunch of people from the Navy there and they know who we were. Other than that, just taught Kristina who we have on baptism date. She's looking very promising, I don't see any hiccups happening before the date approaches. 

Sunday: We had church and also taught Kristina again. It's funny because as I was teaching, I was in the middle of a super spiritual thought, you know, doing my thing. Bonnie, Kristina's friend, was on her phone and a news headline popped up. She interrupted whatever I was saying and said "Sorry, but I think this might apply to you young guys. Kobe Bryant just died with his daughter in a helicopter crash." Yeah, gut punch. I loved the dude growing up. I didn't cry because I'm a man or whatever, but that sucked for sure. I kind of just checked out from reality for a good 30 seconds lingering on the thought of it. I then had to continue teaching which was really awkward because I was ticked off. I eventually sucked up my emotions and continued and clutched up in the end but very unfortunate timing indeed to learn on of my basketball idols growing up died so suddenly and tragically. 

Anyway, that's my week. It was packed full with a bunch of random activites, they don't happen like this very often. I'm starting to notice a lot of change in myself and how I behave. I'm becoming a little more ballzy or confident when it comes to talking to people and not accepting no for an answer. Slowly and slowly, precept upon precept, I'm becoming what Heavenly Father knows I can become.

Love y'all

--
Elder Jackson Batman