Stitches

 

Wassup guys, I'm just gonna get straight to the point: I took a fat elbow right to the lip last preparation day and it wrecked my lip. My companion was going for a wide open layup in basketball and a little stupid voice in the back of my head said "hey, you can block that" and so I tried doing just that. The result was that I sorta slipped and landed right into his elbow and got a big cut on the right side of my mouth. It was bleeding a good amount and I knew immediately I was going to need a stitch. Soooo, we whipped on down to UrgentCare and got the stitch and as of right now, I just got the stitch taken out! I didn't see it fit to go back to UrgentCare to get the one stitch they gave me taken out so I took some sewing scissors and pulled that baby out. My mouth still looks a little weird, but it'll be alright. 

Anyway, now to more spiritual things, we've been super busy these last couple weeks. With how blessed Daphne is as an area and with the responsibility of being a Zone Leader, I don't really get breaks. We just run... like everywhere. We've got 2 baptisms lined up for 27th so we have been hauling trying to get these kids prepared for the sacred dunk. If there's one thing though that I've learned from my mission, opposition before baptisms is soooo real. One of the kids, Teegan, is getting constant thoughts of "you should go check out other churches.. you should push off the date so you're more 'prepared'.." It's been stressful work. Satan really does suck sometimes. The ultimate goal was to have Elder Olsen be here for his baptism because he just got word that he'll be going back to his original assignment in Ethiopia on April 1st.  Reason why was we so badly want this to happen is because Elder Olsen's father put T's dad on date for baptism 30 years ago. With that being said, you try to tell me God ain't real. It's such a crazy miracle, but we really want it to pan out. We'll see what happens.

There's also a lot of other missionaries going back to their original assignments and because of that they are closing a bunch of areas. Right now, we share a ward with the Fairhope Elders, but they are going to be taken out of the area to fill in for the missionaries that are going back. Well... That means I'm going to be taking over Fairhope's work... As well as Daphne's. I don't know who my companion is going to be, I surely hope he's a stud otherwise I'll probably have an aneurysm from the size of the workload. I'll let you know what ends up happening. 

I think I'll leave this here, hope y'all have a wonderfully blessed week. Praise God, Hallelujah, Roll Tide. 🐘 

--
Elder Batman 🦇 

ZL Batman

 

   I'm so happy to be back here in the Foley District in my baby area! I was here for 7 and a half months serving in Foley and now I'm serving in Daphne. I'm so stoked because it is a beautiful area and I'm super excited to get some work done here. Obviously I was a little sad to be leaving my old area in Cullman. My comp was sick, the area was boppin', members weredope, it was a dream come true. I did make a request to President to stay for one more transfer since a kid we were going to baptize was taken into the foster unit 30 minutes before we were going to have his Baptismal interview. He's supposed to come back to his family in April and I just wanted to be there for him since he knows me so much. Obviously, request denied. I'm in Daphne now. But of course, President said the Lord will pave a way for me to be there for him when that time comes.

   Anyway, my new companion Elder Olsen is a great guy, fantastic missionary. He lives in Spanish Fork and he actually knows a few of my friends from home so we have a couple connections. Elder Olsen works super hard, I'm having to adapt to his pace and I love it. A lot of growth is definitely happening right now and I'm really happy with what the future holds. One thing I've noticed with this area is that missionaries have kind of struggled using members in lessons and in my last area that's all we ever did. I definitely know the baptism we got with Deanna was because we had a member at every lesson so I'm definitely going to try fixing that situation here. But Daphne is soooo blessed, way too many people to teach. We should potentially have a few baptisms here this transfer. 

Ah yes, the Zone Leader life. That was so crazy to receive that call from President to be made as one of these. Usually they'd like you to be a District Leader before a Zone Leader since ZLs help out the DLs, but I kinda skipped a step. I figured it's because I was companions with two different ZLs, but idk, I just work here. Any who, there is so many little meetings and different things I have to attend and it chunks a lot of time. They're definitely productive, just not something I'm used to. I do love this assignment though, I've already grown a lot in this past week having to step up so I can be a great example and I just think it's so perfect for me right now. This last week I had a pretty bad cold so that kinda blows, but it was still really really good. 

Well, that's basically the jist of what's been going on. I'm super busy all the time, trying to get a full hour of personal study has been a struggle bus. We just don't have the time sometimes. Also, Elder Olsen loves just talking to random people on the street and since the Coronavirus, I haven't done too much of that at all in the last year. I'm happy and a little terrified to learn those skills again. 

Have a blessed week,

--
Elder Batman 🦇