Elder Nicholas Berrett is currently serving in the Billings Montana mission (serving most of Montana and a good portion of Wyoming) for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is excited to serve the Lord and the people of Montana and Wyoming for the next two years!

Monday, June 12, 2017

Voice Recording June 12 part 2

Well hello again!  So real quick, random thought, apparently the new OS update, there’s some new Samsung stuff they throw on here in your Samsung account, and apparently my Samsung account has been backing up all of my memo notes, from all of the times my tablet randomly reset and everything, and all these notes I thought were lost, well, I just checked memo note, and they are all there.  Tons of all these voice mails, and everything.  I was going back through these, and I’m like “Oh my goodness, this is hilarious.”  So yeah! That’s that. 

Anyways, let’s see, Romeos.  Okay.  So there’s this Italian restaurant in town called Romeos, owned by a member, we apparently get 50 percent off there, at least we did last time, that was amazing.  It’s pretty cheap!  And amazing, amazing food.  I’m like “Holy crap! There’s good restaurants in Montana” Or good restaurants that sell things other than pizza or burgers and steak, because there’s really good restaurants that sell that, but he has two of these restaurants and he’s making bank because they’re good and not pricey, and so everyone goes there because, yeah!    And so I go and get the ‘carb bomb’ is what I call it.  ‘The Carb Bomb’.  It’s fettucine alfredo wrapped up in a tortilla.   So you have the pasta, the bread, also unlimited bread sticks.  And I get that for about seven bucks.  However, with the half off last time it was $3.50.   I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”   And this is a giant burrito too.   So it’s glorious.  I love this place.  We’ve been going there every week.  It’s kinda fun.  Like I’d only been there once with Elder Johnson, and it was amazing, but then we never went back.  A member paid for us, took us out to dinner, and I don’t think I realized how cheap it was. So I’m like, “We’re going here all the time.”  So theoretically we only go there once a week, after district meetings is what we were planning, but this is now the third time in what?  A week and a half?  So yeah, wonderful.   It’s almost been two weeks with Elder Hand.    That’s fun.

Okay, Chris.  I think I’ve told you a bit about him in the past.  Chris is a guy who we do service for on Saturdays.  Every other Saturday at least, but we’re going to start doing it more because he REALLY hit it off with Elder Hand.  He’s a non member.  Starting to warm up to us a little more, starting to ask us some questions.  Which is great, since normally he’s just like, ‘I love you guys’ He really respects the missionaries and loves missionaries.  He always asks questions about missionary work.  But he has his own religion, and that’s kind of what it’s always been.  But now he’s talking to us more.  And especially with Elder Hand, it was his first time meeting him this Saturday, and apparently Chris has been praying for help.  He’s like, “I have this broken down tractor… should I have the missionaries help me fix it? I don’t know…”  He was praying about that, and we show up, and he’s like “Elder Hand, tell me a bit about yourself, and he’s like “Well, I’m a diesel mechanic…”  And oh my goodness, an answer to this guys prayers.  We were able to sit down and do a job that would have taken him all day at least in an hour or two.  It was a Kuboda I think?  A tractor Japanese company, so you open up the insides and everything is super compact. We had to change a timing belt on it, and I’m looking at it going “I don’t even see where the timing belt is…” And they take off the muffler and like Boom!  Timing belt.  But in order to take off the timing belt and change it, we had to take apart just so much crap because there was stuff in the way.   We took out the fan, and all these things, just to give ourselves a quarter inch of room to squeeze it through, and then shove a new one up in.  And then work it through the whole tractor, or it’s not a tractor it’s a front loader or whatever,  I guess it’s a tractor, yeah, but you put a bucket on it, I don’t know.  So yeah, it was an adventure.   It was kinda cool to see Elder Hand in his element.   He’s just a stud.  But him and Chris just really hit it off.  Chris relates with him, it’s just super super cool to see.   So that was awesome and he was so happy because he had some extra waders, which apparently are boots that go clear up to like your waist, you use to wade through things, go fly fishing, do whatever.  He gave us both a pair, and mines a little too big for me, and I’m like, “I really don’t know if I’m ever going to use these, I’m going to be completely honest.”  And he says, “Oh just take them. You might need them.”  And I’m like, “okay.” And Elder hand is like, “Hey, those are my brother’s size. Can I have them?”  And I’m like “Go for it.” Sorry, but I am really not going to use them, to be honest.  So I have a recording of him… I don’t know if… I doubt it will play while I’m recording this… Of him just, we found a mode where we can take a picture and record some audio, and he loves it.  It’s this picture of him, in all his redneck glory, with his waders on, and “I got me a pair of waders!  Wooo!!” Just shouting, loving it. It’s great. 



Oh!  I’m going to go put up the flag. I can’t believe we haven’t put that up today.  Okay, so lets check those off…. Check, check, check, check.  Ok, what’s this one? Thirty Two degrees.  Oh. Yeah….  So it’s been getting pretty hot in our house.  Whew, almost dropped the flag, that would have been really bad.  I mean, it’s summer, we’re in a house, with lots of windows, and of course, since it’s Montana, no one out here believes in air conditioning, so we don’t have any.   We have two heaters though.  A giant gas heater, and a giant wood burning stove.  And I’m like, “That’s great, but that’s not going to help us.”  So we’ve been opening all the windows up at night, and throughout the day to cool off the house,  and it’s been kind of getting a little colder and colder at nights, as it is getting a little cooler.  Because that’s Montana.  A little bipolar.   And last night, or not last night, but the night before, Elder Hand loves it cold, and he also likes the fan on.  We have this fan on, kinda redneck style, I’ll have to take a picture of it,  it’s this small white box fan,  and we open up our window and stick it in.  Well, it’s missing a blade, and a couple of them are broken and cracked.  So it ain’t the best fan, but it works.  It’s decent.  And it’s the best we got.  And so we stuck that in our window, but it shakes.  Really bad.  And so we duct tape it down in the window, otherwise it would just move itself right off.  So we have it duct taped down, and also to stop the shaking, I have a bag and an old bike lock, basically wedging it in the window, preventing it from just moving at all.   It’s kinda funny.    And then we open up the window and it just blows some nice cool air in.  Well the other night, it got down to 32 degrees.  And it was really, really cold.  I woke up and I’m just like freezing.  I’m wrapped up in my giant Christopher blanket, like a burrito… nothing.  So, that was an adventure. (laughs)  I’m like, “Okay Montana, lets be winter.  That’s great.  Let’s be winter in June.”  Snow last month, get down to 32 degrees…  That was just one night though, and we’ve been fine since then.   Elder Hand really enjoyed it.  He had a great night.  That was fun.

Today we’re going to Missoula.  Our car has been giving us some trouble.  The engine light turned on, and we found out something is wrong with our emissions?  The evap-something-ma-bobber?  Elder and knows what it is.  He’s like, “Can I just call up our vehicle coordinator, buy it, and install it myself?” And I’m like, “Probably not.”  It’s a mission vehicle.  We take it to the dealership.  We called up the vehicle coordinator and that’s what he told us to do.   Elder Hand always has these great ideas for our truck.  He’s like, “So, you’re going to go sit down at the dealership, and I’m going to walk up and say, ‘ I need a lift kit…’”  He wants to do that, he wants to take off the muffler… He says we’re going to have the best suped up Frontier in the mission!  And I’m like, “Elder, it’s a Frontier…  It’s just a small truck.”   So that’s fun.  Also you know, Mission Vehicle.  He’s joking though.  So that’s that.  We’re going to Missoula for that also,  we were planning on just doing it at zone conference, but at interviews with President Wadsworth, we’re like “So, the car’s been giving us some grief, but we’ll take care of that at zone conference in like a week  or two, but he’s like “Zone Conference goes until 3…”  So we’re going to go do that, and go to Wal-mart to get a bunch of stuff we need for our apartment.  Like fans, cleaning supplies, blinds…. Ah crap, we had part of a list going.   There’s so stuff that we were like “We really, really need stuff.”  And like we just HAVE to go to the big city to get.   Like our housing inspectors came, and were like “Hey, you need this stuff.”  And we’re like, “Ok.”  And so we were planning on doing that in like a week or two, and Sister Wadsworth is like “You can’t do all that in a little bit of time.  Just go there for your preparation day.  We’ll give you extra miles for that.”  Yay!  Will do!  So that’s why we’re going to Missoula.   It’ll be fun.  An adventure.

Jacob.  So Jacob is this awesome investigator that we’ve been teaching.   Amazing investigator that we’ve been teaching.  Grandpa is in the ward, active member, mom is coming back in Salt Lake.   Well, we just had our last lesson with him.   Cause he flew over to Salt Lake for a job interview.  His parents both work for the airline so he’s like “I get free flights.  That’s how this goes.”   He can just hop on any flight that he wants and go all over the world with this company.   As long as they have extra seats he’s basically able to just get on.   I’m like,  “That’s kinda cool!”  So he flew over for a job interview, came back, got a call, he got the job.   And they want him to start immediately.   So he’s having to go back to Salt Lake.  We had an amazing last lesson, we need to forward his teaching record to the missionaries there.  Took pictures with him, exchanged emails, he’s like “I know how the mission thing works, You’ll put me on your weekly email list, I have friends that went on a mission, I’m from freaking Salt Lake.”  But, he wants to go on a mission.  He’s awesome.  He doesn’t know exactly where he’s going to get baptized though, either in Salt Lake, or here.  Cause again, they can all just fly over. Cause I know the grandpa want’s to baptize him, and he likes this area, but he might also need to stay there for his job so grandpa might fly over there.  So, I might get to see him again soon.  Might have to wait until after my mission.   I told him to keep me informed.   It’s sad, but he’s progressing though.  He really has, through his own efforts, all we’ve really done is been there and were like “Here’s the Book of Mormon, here’s the gospel.”  Our first lesson he’s like, “Yeah, I already read the whole First Book of Nephi.”  He’s already halfway through the Second.   Just a stud.  He’s out there, working for himself.  He’s just feasting.  Being awesome. Love Jacob.  I’ll keep praying for him definitely.   I hope to stay in touch with him.


Let’s see… Auction.  There’s one of those Youth Auction things, that we do back home, they had that here.   Free dinner, so you know, we didn’t have a dinner, so we went to the dinner.   It was great, but one of these members came up to us and gave us $10 and said “Consider this me feeding you.”  And we’re really like, “We shouldn’t..”  And he’s like “No, you’re going to go over there and you’re going to buy a dessert.  Consider it from me.  Me feeding you.  And we’re like, okay… So we went over there and put a bid on some peanut butter cookies.  Elder Hand really likes them, so we got peanut butter cookies.  We wrote “Missionaries - $10” and no one out-bid us for that.  I did, I had $5 cash, and so I’m like “Okay, there’s these two beautiful flaky pastries with tons of cream and fruit in it”  It’s like an ice-cream sandwich, but the sandwich is like these two giant pastry thingies, I guess just like cream filling, fruit, super, super good from the looks of it. Apparently there’s this German bakery and I need to figure out where that is.  It just looked amazing, and someone had only bid $2 on it, and I’m like “Heck yeah, Missionaries - $5.” Apparently at the last second someone outbid me. I’m like, “Eh.  I only put down $5.”   It was this giant thing too, so it was EASILY worth more than that. I’m like “I got the Great Gadsby Bakery back home.”   I can wait.   So that was fun.  We did get the peanut butter cookies though.


Ok, lets see.  The next couple… Ohhh… 17 minutes. Ok, I’ll save this one again.   And then start a new one.   Love you to death,  I hope you are having a wonderful morning.  Or day, whenever it is you are listening to this.   I hope all is going well at work.  I hope the kids haven’t torn apart the house, cause it’s freaking summer,  that’s awesome that grandma is in town, I hope you guys are having fun with her too.   And grandma, if you hear this, I love you too so much!  I hope you have a wonderful day grandma.  You’re the best.   Oh there’s my scriptures.  I thought they were locked out in the car and I didn’t have the keys because my companion is sleeping.  So I studied out of a spare Book of Mormon.  Well, I found them, they  were on the couch, or the sort of couch thing. Broken… thing. It’s comfy. That’s all that matters.  All right, love you guys, Bye! 

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