Exchanges!

Goooood morning everyone!

I sincerely hope that you are all having a Fantastic week!

So to start off, I GOT A CROCK POT! A glorious crock pot, I can't wait to consume all of the fantastic meals that I will be making with it. :)

So this week, I had the opportunity to go on a 3 day exchange with some other elders in our district in Deer Lodge! It was so fantastic!

One of the really cool parts about their area is that there is this really awesome member who gave them a whole house, like 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, with a giant kitchen and living room house, and has an open tab for them at this amazing restaurant called Broken Arrow with the second best burgers ever! (first being Slaters 50/50 :)) The elder that I was with (Elder Palmer) was pretty fantastic as well. It really was a treat to watch him teach. I think one of my favorite parts about exchanges it the opportunity that you get to learn from others. One of the things that I really learned from Elder Palmer was how important it is to have members at lessons. He had an investigator who is really struggling with some things and the member that we prayerfully brought just happened to know some people who might be able to help, plus they connected really well so now the investigator can really start to feel the love that a ward and the members in it can provide :)

Another one of the cool things that happened on the exchange was that I got the crock pot! Apparently these elders just found it in their house a while back, but decided that crock pots were absolutely useless. So, thanks to them and their sad lack of knowledge of the glory that is the crock pot, I now have one :)

We don't have too many plans for Thanksgiving that I know of so far, but president did just send out an email telling us that we need to start asking members if we can join them for thanksgiving because it's a great opportunity to get to know that members better and see if there is any service that we can provide for them. I'm a little worried though. Apparently the average amount of dinners in Montana is 9 with the least that I've heard being 6 and the most 14. I don't know how I'm going to do it. It will be glorious and amazing, but insane. 

This week was also Zone training! It was an absolutely fantastic training meeting on the importance of planning. One of the coolest parts was when several companionships got up and shared miracles that they saw and wouldn't have gotten if they didn't have successful nightly and weekly planning sessions :) I am so thankful that we had such great lessons at the zone training. It really helped to cover up my companion and I's musical number. The funny thing was that while we were given a week to prepare, we sorta forgot about it until the day of. Thankfully thanks to all of the memorization practice that I had in choir (I always forgot/lost my music so quickly memorized it) I was able to quickly memorize the tenor part to "I know that my redeemer lives" and sang that while Elder Wessendorf sang the melody. Also thankfully it turned out pretty well :)

 It's amazing the miracles that the lord will provide, both on and off our mission, when we plan out things. One example of this is one of our investigators Randa. She is really struggling to progress at this point and we were really afraid that she would become an eternal investigator, one who just likes to have us over because she likes the gospel principles that are taught, but never acts on them. Yesterday, we decided to utilize prayerful planning and carefully identified and prayed about a member who we thought and felt like would be a good one. The lesson went fantastic! In the past Randa didn't really understand why it's so important to attend church. She kept telling us that the mountain was her church and that she could feel close to God there. The member that we brought managed to wonderfully explain that she used to think that way as well and that what she had come to realize, was that while the woods/mountains are fantastic places to be, we can feel even closer to God when we obey his commandments such as church attendance. Then she testified of how now she feels the mountains are even more spiritual to her as she now strives to keep all of God's commandments. :)

Another thing that made this week interesting was that we finally got into the single digits of temp. Several times this week. Thankfully I was prepared! While I may or may not have been the laughing stock of the city with all of the gear that I was wearing, I was fairly warm. :) Thankfully this next week shouldn't be as bad, we finally got a snow shovel so now driving should be way easier!

Thank you all so much for everything! I hope that you all have a most fantastic week! And in the words of the Immortal bard Samuel J. Snodgrass, as he was about to be led to the Guillotine....Make em' laugh!

Never give up, Never Surrender!

-Elder Berrett

PS - the picture is Post pod ball :) we would have had our gym clothes on too but they were still in the dryer so we played in our church clothes :)  Pod ball is the greatest game ever made :) it's basically everyone vs. everyone dodge ball :) the only difference is that once your down, you have to stay there so that other people can "pod" the ball to you.

They do that because you aren't allowed to move with the ball. The only way to win is to literally get everyone out because the moment the person who got you gets out you are back in. Some games can last upwards of 1-2 hours :)