The Fallout

 You're gonna have to forgive me for my laziness in writing an email last week, I've just been so busy with doing absolutely nothing I couldn't fit it in the schedule. 

Okay, I shouldn't say "nothing", we have been doing something. I guess I should mention first that our mission is completely quarantined and not permitted to leave our apartment. Luckily, I get the luxury of being able to go to the church to enjoy the wifi for Facebook and calling the fam. But yeah, we've been given the Fallout treatment, acting like the world is completely infected and dangerous. I mean, it is dangerous, don't get me wrong, but its blown a little bit out of proportion. Like the other day at Walmart, I made a stupid joke about the world ending and this woman heard me say it and said "This isn't a joking matter. It's real s***." 

Oh 😳, okay. My bad.

I'll give a run down of the oh-so productive week real quick:

- We just work with technology as much as we can and it has been hard, I'll be honest. It is difficult trying to communicate with our investigators because they are already busy with caring for their own families at home trying not to die by the dark plague. We're giving it our best, but it's been rough for sure.

- So many fricken card games, holy heck. Exploding Kittens, Unstable Unicorns, Goat Lords, etc etc. There comes a time when you've played enough of all the games you have and I feel like we are getting very close to that point. Only so many games you can play before it becomes not so fun anymore. We will preservere. I'll let you know now, I can shuffle cards and do the whole bridge thing really well now. 

- Pretty much just staring at my hand. 

Alright, that's kinda all I got. We are allowed to watch a select few Disney Movies and a lot of Church movies, so that's fun and all. We definitely expect to be in this scenario for a long time soooooo, til next week.

Thanks,
--
Elder Batman

Just About That 3 Month Mark

  In 3 days (the 18th) it'll be my official 3 month mark, how dope is that. Definitely hasn't felt like I've been here that long, time whips on by when you're out here. I guess that's just what the mission does. But as far as this week goes, I'm gonna be honest, I don't got a lot to report on. Here's what I got:

-Did our Animal Shelter Puppy Barn service as usual, but this time came with a little twist. Animal Shelter lady comes up to us and goes "We have a different assignment for you today, one that'll be a little unorthodox." I walk in this room to see what monster dog they want us to tend to, and it's a freaking pig. This little guy is about the size of a puppy, but not exactly a teacup. We put "Chester", that's his name, on a leash and took him to the puppy play field. All little man does is eat grass, doesn't even care to be playful in anyway. He especially hates when you pick him up, lets out a banshee's squeal. Freakin' Chester, still gotta love him. Oh, and he was only at the shelter because his owner got arrested so they just shipped mister Bacon to the puppy barn as a place of holding until they figure out other arrangements. Lucky us. 

-Due to this whole Corona Virus situation our entire world is dealing with, no one really wants to see us. Members and people we are teaching are kind of in disbelief on how we are still allowed to proselyte in person. Because of this exact reason, we are in the works as a mission on figuring out how to use technology to our full advantage. It is very likely that Elder Peterson and I will be told not to leave our apartment by our Mission President (just my opinion), so we gotta tech-up. Also trying to get some baller board games to make it a little more enjoyable. 

-Fortunately for us, members are still feeding us every day even with all this.  Blessings on blessings. Went to Cici's Pizza Buffet 2 times this week, once with a member and once as a district for P-Day. Absolutely delicious. Also got fed some of the best meat loaf and banana pudding I've ever had by the Vasko's. And beans, beans are starting to come around to me. I haven't liked them too much before my mission, but now that I've had them oh.... 9 times now, the tastebuds become a little more happy about them. Trying to think of other things we ate this week... oh yeah, ribs. I've had so much ribs in Alabama, it's ridiculous. They're very good usually, but it feels like just about every meal. Alright, enough about food. Next bullet point.

-Also did some service at the Salvation Army this week, always a joy doing that. Not even being sarcastic. I love that beaten down thrift store. The ladies who work there are always so kind and funny, I'll talk to them all day. We also get to just screw around with whatever random object we find, hence the picture of Elder Peterson with the mannequin arms and legs on his body. I've gotten real good at using a tagging gun and hanging clothes, I'm getting weirdly fast at it. 3 people just quit actually so I have no idea how they are gonna manage that whole situation because I think only 3 people work there now as far as I've seen. Whatever, we'll still keep coming every Saturday and help them out the best we can.

Alright guys, we'll just have to wait and see if next weeks email is all about my quarantined life or not. I'm not really sure which one I'm hoping for. Board games and deep doctrine diving while on house arrest sounds pretty fun, not gonna lie. 

Missionary work is definitely very odd and awkward right now, but we make due with the cards we are dealt. 

Love y'all

--
Elder Batman

• 
  

One of them “Weird Weeks”

This week is another one of those weeks that have Zone Conference and a Temple Trip. I look forward to weeks like this because it's a change in our daily routine and it's super nice to talk people in my zone. Sometime missionary work can feel a little repetitive, but that's alright. Weeks like this help with that. I'm going to stick to bullet points this week about weird interesting stuff that happened:

- I don't think I mentioned last week, we went to the Beach for P-day. Yeah, blast and a half. The weather was like 75 degrees and partly cloudy, absolute money beach weather. Obviously since we are missionaries, we can't go in the water since "Satan works in the waters" or whatever, but that's alright, just the sand will do. We played some volleyball with the whole district because the beach has nets setup, also played some 3-hit kill with a volleyball, and some ultimate frisbee. To top it all off, we played some spikeball and that game is so fricken fun. I'll definitely play some more of that when I get home.

- Had our once-a-transfer Temple Trip with the whole Zone. This time was a little different than last time, we got to do an Endowment session and a baptism session. The names we used were from members in our ward, hopefully in the future we can get our most recent converts' names and take them there. Heck, let's get the converts themselves there too, why not. We also had the opportunity to clean the temple after we did our whole sessions. That's an interesting experience, especially when you vacuum everywhere and absolutely nothing gets sucked up because the place is so gosh dang clean already. But whatevs', still great to serve.

- Zone Conference, and this one was a doosie. So many new changes are being implemented in just our mission, no one else is doing this. We have Sister APs (assistant of President), we are making it so there is going to be three Zone Leaders (North, Center, South), we have score cards to make sure people are consistently working hard, District Leaders are going to be taking on much more responsibility, and there's more but that's all I can think of right now. These don't take action until next transfer, but I'l be honest, I'm a little freaked out about this. Change is good for growth, but it isn't really fun now is it? It's uncomfortable as heck and I'm already going through a lot of change as is. It's alright, it'll all work out, just my initial feelings. 

That's basically my week. There's a few more interesting things that happened, but this email is getting long and my fingers are getting tired. Just hope for next week, yeah? The Church is true, the Book is Blue, y'all remember that. 

Til Next Week, 

--
Elder Batman

Lessons on Lessons

Another week, another email. This week has been fairly action pact. A lot of lessons to be done, a lot of lives to be put on the path that leads to eternal life. I'm gonna do some bullet points of highlights through out weeks:

- We got taken to Wahlburgers which is a restaurant that Mark Wahlberg himself set up along side his family. It's pretty expensive for a missionary, luckily a member took us there. My burger was like 11.00$, but the thing is there is no sides with that. Buying fries cost an extra 4.00$. Luckily, our waiter knew of us and what we do and is very grateful for our efforts, so he got us some fries on the house. Cannot complain, the burger I got alongside the fries was yummy in my fricken tummy. The design of the store has pictures of Mark and his fam with a bunch of movie titles that he was in. Super dope. 

- We got pizza delivered to our house 3 times this week. Sometimes members who are on our meal calendar can't take us out, so they just ask what pizza we want. That last pizza we got this week, deepdish large pepporoni from Pizza Hut, ooooooooo. Just another thing we cannot complain about, we're actually pretty excited when something like this happens. 

- We went to the animal shelter and played with some puppies. It's just so cool that we get to do that. Can you believe that? We play with puppies for 2 hours and it's considered a great service to them? Gosh what a life I'm livin' right now. We got 3 different puppies and put them in the same play place. They just chase each other around for about a half an hour, then we go get different ones. Although, there is one downside. I think my sense of hearing is slowly deteriorating the more I go because of how many dogs there are and how loudly they bark constantly. But that's a small price to pay for such a joyous situation, kind of like the Gospel of Jesus Christ. *wink*

- As I've mentioned before, we volunteer at Salvation Army. Well this last time we were there, we ended up talking to this girl named A who showed so much interest in learning more about our church. She's always made comments about how nice we dress as missionaries and wondered why that is. So yeah, we told her. The discussion was so great and full of the spirit that she was in tears. We're meeting with her on Tuesday, it's gonna be a great time. 

- We taught 4 different lessons this week, which is a lot for how small our teaching pool is at the moment. I'm just gonna talk about the 2 that were on Sunday. They were with J and K. K was my first baptism, we just had a discussion about the Restoration once again because of New Member Discussions. We gotta make sure she has this information inside her brain so we teach it all again. She's such a cheerful spirit to be around, but she has some DEEP hard questions. She really knows how to put us on our toes, let's just put it that way. Anyway, we also taught J. He's the guy that chucked his dip right in front of us as soon as we brought up the Word of Wisdom. What a legend. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the lesson went really well as they usually do with him. He's so eager to learn more and more, he comes ready with notes and his Book of Mormon and it's just so cool to see that. Probably one of the nicest guys I've ever met, can't really explain him in any other way.

Well, that's my week in a nutshell. This next week is very busy with Zone Conference and our once a transfer Temple Trip. Should be very interesting, I'll get some dope pictures out of it. Anyway, Love y'all

--
Elder Batman