11-21-2016

Title: Happy Thanksgiving TODOS!!!


Heyyyoooo!! Great week everybody! I want to start of with a few Tommy
Monson quotes:

"As we make Christ the center of our lives, our fears will be replaced
by the courage of our convictions"

"Fill your minds with truth, fill your hearts with love, fill your
lives with service."

Love the prophet tho. A little quick update I'm having a blast running
the area! I haven't ran into any crazy difficulties yet and I'm
learning the area like the back of my hand! Ohhhhh and I get my
GREENIE this week! I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't nervously A
greenie is a new missionary fresh out of the Missionary Training
Center that (like me at the beginning) won't know anything or what is
going on! I'm "technically" done being trained but I get to do it all
over again with a random new Elder!!! Stoked. Reyes and I are getting
along really well.  So,  I'll jump into the week!!

Monday: I went Bowling for the first time in months!! Took me back to
going to Fat Catz like every other week up in Provo. Went with the
District and I guess you can say we were all a bit rusty....I won with
a 116... It was weird too because we were the only ones there haha.
Their music playlist in the Bowling Alley was unreal too... Weezer
RHCP The Killers we were all jamming haha

Tuesday: Zone Conference!!! 2nd time in one month but I ain't
complaining! Each time we have one of these I get such a spiritual and
mental refreshment. I'm in the Chattanooga Zone and we have I'd say 40
missionaries in this zone so it's quite a lot! Every time President
Griffin teaches us I am just zoned in. I learn so much from him every
time I'm around him. A little background about him he's from Utah and
owns his own his own massive business so he's my type of guy. He has
so much  knowledge and a natural talent for teaching and speaking.
He's very personable as well. We have gotten really tight since I've
been here. He gave us a training on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and
basically called us to repentance. It was awesome.

Wednesday: we had a great learning experience today. We went into a
Plan of Salvation lesson a little unprepared..actually quite
unprepared. I felt like we taught an MTC lesson. Not good. But after
later that night the Lord showed us some tender mercies and gave us
the opportunity to teach it again with another lady named Araceli! We
had Hermana Torres with us as well and it was an amazing lesson!!
Learned from my mistake on that one fo sho. Preparation is ESSENTIAL
FOR SUCCESS in cualquier cosa.

Thursday: Roller Coaster day! I'll get the bad out first. We locked
ourselves out of our car and as I did that I stepped in some dog poop
and yea there you have that. Took awhile to get that taken care of.
Reyes lost his wallet too so that sucked. Still hasn't found it.
Looking back on these classic situations it was pretty annoying but in
the moment I felt completely fine. I've been learning a lot about just
accepting situations for what they are and dealing with things with
legitimate gratitude. Weird right? Gratitude during crappy situations?
But it makes life so much easier. And that gratitude isn't necessarily
for my problems but just for my blessings and life in general. But we
taught Liz the Plan of Salvation!! Went perfectly! She's my favorite
straight up.

Friday: back to back days of roller coaster! All our appts fell
through and no one wants to talk to us! Honestly it was a super fun
day tho I don't know why! I'd say the highlight is when we got
pupusas! El Salvadorian food for the W! Got in with an investigator
who dropped off the face of the earth named Edy! He had a baptismal
date awhile back so we'll see where that goes.

Saturday: my 4 MONTH mark tho!!! Got attacked my some 3 legged Buff
Chihuahua!!! Best part of this day was hands down the Thanksgiving
Ward activity! There was endless food, drinks, and fantastic español
música!!! We had over 10-15 investigators show up to the activity! The
members brought a ton of people and it was a fantastic time. Even did
some dancing hahaha! Definitely a successful night.

Sunday: Liz and Edy came to church today!! We taught Gospel Principles
on the importance of the Sabbath Day! The blessings that come from
spending the day going to church, being with our families, and
focusing on the Lord are unreal. We went tracting and had no success
and saw these two high school kids playing basketball. Challenged them
to 2 on 2 and then was up those whole game except we lost 10-12 (they
foul for days). But anyways we talked to them afterwards and taught a
bunch of little kids that were watching the game. So freaking fun.
Everyone was so surprised that we could ball.

Grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary for another week! Love
you all and happy Thanksgiving!!!!!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Elder Macdonald

11-14-2016

Title: Apocalypse

This week had to have been the longest week of my life so far in the
field....AND IT WASSSS AWESOME!!!! Woooooooo. Anyways, first off I am
sure you all have heard about the Wild fires going on down here! The
Entire city of Dalton is covered in smoke. Like completely. Hence my
blog title. I feel like the Second Coming is happening right now!!
There's been wildfires that I can spot literally from my apartment in
the "mountains" (green Rolling hills). But anyways so it is a little
spooky here rn. Not to mention we're in a horrible drought too! And it
is finally getting cold here woooooo. And that's your weather for the
day, here's what's happening in my neck of the woods!

Monday: Last PDAY with Elder Mitchell:( we didn't have miles to go
anywhere either so we had a very chill day too say the least. If y'all
didn't know I got cut short of training. Only got 10/12 weeks needed.
And now I'll be training a new missionary next week. Nuts! I'm excited
though. But for our last PDAY we went to the huge park across the
street, enjoyed the weather, played some ball. Enjoyed the company of
the District. Classic moment from the day though....Mitchell finally
out-rebounded me and got so excited he took the ball and accidentally
sprinted down and scored on the wrong basket hahaha, safe to say we
all were on the ground in laughter/tears. RIP Trainer ❤️ taught this
really amazing lady named Natalie. She says she wants to be
baptized!!!! The date we tried to set with her conflicted with an
event she has (family oriented) so we will set the date next week!!

Tuesday: today was super weird because we spent the first part of it
helping Mitchell pack. We taught a couple lessons that went pretty
well. We visited the family of the guy who we were teaching that went
to jail last week! They were doing a lot better and were grateful for
our visit! The rest of the snight was spent with the Torres Family at
this local Taqueria. There's little Taqueria everywhere here in Dalton
and they're all DELICIOUS thoooo. Dinner was merging racking because
all the TVs were on covering the Election!.... I was pretty nervous
for the outcome, but then I realized waitttttt I have 19 more months
not to worry about this stuff:). But Congrats to Mr. Trump. Hope our
country comes together and supports our government and makes some
vital changes for the better.

Wednesday: Drove to Farragut with the Amigos to drop off Mitchell.
Finally had Chipotle for the first time in like 5 months! Had to get
that Quesorito. Started also driving for the first time in sooooo long
so that first car ride felt unbelievably weird! Love driving here, so
pretty. Except the drivers here suck. To the maximum...President
Griffin pulled me aside into his office today and he grabbed me by the
shoulders and told me how ready I was to train a new missionary and
that I'm going to do great. Love that man with the entirety of my soul
seriously. I can tell he believes in my personal capabilities and
potential. Can't wait to expand those.

Thursday: We gave 3 different Priesthood blessings today! The Sisters
were not feeling good so we got approved to go to their apartment and
give them blessings. Also this member who is waiting for a Kidney
transplant called us asking for one as well and we had Hermano Ray
with us as well, Hermano Ray is one of our most clutch members who
actually served his mish in Phoenix! I guess at one point Ray served
in Elder Reyes's Ward and even came to his house. Small world. I keep
an oil vile on my key chain at all times and it's supper convenient:)
we taught like 3 lessons about the temple to less actives today and I
really miss that place. No temple in my mission. But all good!
Hopefully there will be soon! Very spiritual day. The power of the
Priesthood is REAL.

Friday: we had an awesome lesson with this lady named Rocio! We gave
her son a blessing a few days prior and he was feeling much better!
Kept smiling at us too haha, love little latino kids. My main man
Shane Wilson. This kid is a senior in high school and probably the
most solid investigator I've ever met....but he doesn't speak
Spanish:/ we referred him to the sisters. All good of course! Dinner
with the Olivas Family was amazing. They gave us some sweaters and
jackets too!! Winter is coming ahhhh I ain't ready. The cold here is
so much different that the west coast. Humidity. We then visited this
referral named Geno Dorado. He's disabled in a wheel chair and has no
arms but he had a ton of questions for us. We only had a little bit of
time but we let him know how much the Gospel could bless his life
regardless of his circumstances and he Lit up!! La Familia Batchelor
took us to Krispy Kreme for some "yearly anniversary" of the
establishment here in Dalton sooo....FREE DONUTS😁

Saturday: Happy BDAY Elise!!!:) Today was awesome. We went to this
place called the Flea Market and handed out a ton of pass along cards!
However, a Jehovah's Witness decided to come argue with us, so after
awhile of him talking we just tried to leave him with a card. Classic.
30-45 minutes....anyways but so we spent two hours with Hector Rios
(he's still not committing to baptism but he has no problems with
anything and beliefs everything,...ahhh) helping him in his garage and
taught the Word of Wisdom. He's loved it and is solid with the
commandment. A less active family that we planned to see for 10
minutes kept us for 30 min and fed us endlessly. So nice. Love the
Familia Garcia!!! I taught tithing, fasting, and fast offerings for
the first time on my mish to Karrie Rodriguez! It went really well!
They committed to live the commandments:)

Sunday: Stake Conference!!!!! President Griffin was giving a talk and
he called every missionary UP to the front of the pulpit and gave us a
big shout out. So we were standing in from of like 3,000 people.
Pretty cool. President is on his last year of his mish. Goes home at
my year mark:/ had lunch afterwards with some members and had the best
time every. At one point I was on the ground crying laughing. We have
some awesome members and they are so willing to serve!! Got 2 new
investigators named Frank and Nicolas! Seem cool! Vamos a ver:) best
part of this day was our lesson with Liz Fraire and her husband
Manuel!! We were teaching them and found out that Frank was actually
baptized and is just super inactive! We extended his wife the
invitation to be baptized and we set a date with her for DEC 17th. Liz
is pregnant right now too and is due on the 6th so pray for her!!:) I
told Manuel he could baptize his wife since he has the priesthood and
he said he really wants to come back to church and to have the
opportunity for that!!! So stoked for them. I like sprinted off the
driveway after the lesson, heal clicked then Went nuts with Reyes!!!
It was so awesome.


Anyways!! Best week! Lots of changes but I'm doing well and adjusting
and I'm so looking forward to continue to run this area and to learn
from Elder Reyes and to train!! The Lord is blessing me with so many
opportunities to succeed I just need to work hard and smart! And with
love. My heart is here. I love the people. Love all of you. I wouldn't
be able to have any of these opportunities without y'all... seriously.
My gratitude is endless! Have the best week:)

Elder Mac