Scottie and his fellow missionaries on their Labor Day hike!

Scottie in his Ga Tech Gear

Monday: (9/2/13) 

It was so nice I got to email with you today. Happy Labor Day, I'm glad y'all got to spend it with the family, it was awesome seeing the pictures of everyone! We actually had a really good P-Day because we went on this awesome hike in Wasatch Forest (I think that's what it's called) to a place called Donut Falls, there was a circular hole in the rock with a little waterfall running through it. I got a bunch of cool pictures I'll try and send so you all can see what it was like. It was the greenest and most humid part of Utah I've been to yet, so it kind of reminded me of home back in Georgia haha. I definitely miss the south. We got to visit with our recent converts too, the Salinas family, and they gave us a whole watermelon! That was pretty exciting since it's my favorite fruit, they're really nice people. It's been a tiring day though, and tomorrow we have Zone Conference (where all the missionaries in that area get together with their leaders for instruction), so I'm going to go get ready for that. Love you all!

Donut Falls!

Nice View!

Tuesday:
Today was a super busy day, we had our Magna Zone Conference  that happens 4 times a year and it went from 10 am to 4 pm. I gave a talk about the Savior and his Atonement and I wanted to share a few of the quotes I found and presented in my talk:

“Christ is the light to humanity. In that light man sees his way clearly. When it is rejected, the soul of man stumbles in darkness. No person, no group, no nation can achieve true success without following Him who said:

“‘I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.’ (John 8:12)” (David O. McKay in CR, Apr. 1940, p. 115.)

We learned a lot about how to also stay focused on our missions and always work hard and not "become weary." It was a really good training and I'm glad we were there, it didn't even seem like it lasted 6 hours.

Wednesday:
Today was a pretty crazy day. Normal workout and study and all that, we had lunch and then I ran by the post office to drop Sophia's package off, the guy told me it should be there by Friday so I hope it makes it in time! Happy Birthday Sophia, I hope you have a great day! :)

We had an interesting dinner and then we made some good visits. In our last visit/lesson with a guy named William, it got rough. A 20 year old named Danny was there and his uncle Mathan was there and then someone, I don't even remember how, Danny started talking about how happiness is psychological and he couldn't be happy because of some things that happened to him, Mathan started arguing with him and then he told us about some really rough stuff that happened to him. So I just tried to end it with a spiritual thought and my testimony that the Gospel and Savior can help us through anything, it was wild though.

Thursday:
Today was a pretty good day. I did some studying this morning (used the institute manual to better understand that olive tree allegory in Jacob 5, in Spanish, so that took some concentration haha) and then for lunch I went back to my Southern roots: scrambled eggs, grits, and toast. The only thing I was missing was bacon or sausage, but I didn't have any. Then we did weekly planning, 3 hours in all its glory. We also had an amazing dinner of pasole with Hermana Esquivel. We spent a bit of the night helping our Branch Mission Leader (who is no good at technology but just the nicest guy in the world) create an LDS.org account and then we had correlation. It was a pretty solid day.

Friday:
Today was a good day. We got up and I had a good workout and personal study. We did companionship study and then somehow we got on the topic of food and Elder Coffey just randomly pulled out this recipe for Cowboy Cookies (chocolate chip and oat cookies). They looked amazing and we almost had everything to make them, so during lunch we had a member run us to Smith's (grocery store) and we got some more flour and sugar. We spent a bit of time making them. Our official reason was to take them to a few church leadership and member families....we also just wanted cookies! Each batch makes 4 dozen cookies....we made 3 batches. It was deliciously fun haha. 

Cookie baking adventure!

 They had to borrow the mixer!

 

 We got to eat dinner with the Mejia family and they're always really funny, so that was enjoyable. We were having a really good lesson with Judith Sandoval and her kids....and then my nose just went into waterfall mode with blood. Completely random, and it wouldn't stop for a while! I had to post up in their bathroom for like 15 minutes, and they have the cutest little 3 year old daughter named Kiara who kept trying to help me by handing me paper towels and asking if I was okay in Spanish over and over. It finally stopped, we finished the lesson, and then I started my newest goal: I spent 30 minutes at night running around our apartment complex. I feel great now and definitely want to do that to keep up some sort of good physical shape so I don't lose all my athletic ability! It was a good day.

Saturday:
Today was such a busy and tiring day, but it was awesome! We started the day off with Soccer Saturdays at 7:30. We played for like 2 hours and had several investigators and less active members there, including Juan Mercado (19) and his dad who are both AMAZING at soccer. It was so fun to play with them, they were like pros. We ran back and showered and then ran back to the church building to help Hermana Liliana Mejia with the Primary (the children’s’ program in each ward/congregation) presentation activity (One Sunday each year the children present a themed program in our sacrament meeting). She was assigning all the parts for the upcoming activity and we got to help a few kids understand what it means to pray or bear your testimony, and the best thing is that Judith Sandoval was there with all 5 of her kids and they all got parts and plan on coming to church now! That was really exciting.

 We ran back to the apartment, changed, and then ran back out to help our ward mission leader Tomas Carrasco with some chores he had, mainly  cutting his grass and the lawns of some of his children that live in the area. But before we started he was like oh wait, let's eat some food I made for you first. It was some tortillas and a spicy guacamole and cilantro and onion mixture and then two different types of what looked like Carne Asada, he told us that one was seasoned differently but I didn't care. I ate both and then he gave us a strawberry and spinach shake, super delicious. Then like 30 minutes later Hermano Carrasco was like "did you like the taco meat?" And I was like "yeah it was delicious!" And then he just had this huge smile on his face and was like "that was lengua y cachete". It wasn't steak, it was cow tongue and cow cheek!!!! I ate like 4 tacos of it! It was actually really good it just had a softer texture, and because I didn't know what I was eating it was fine! Such a fun experience. And then we went and helped Hermano Espinoza change the water pump on his big suburban, Padre would have loved to help out with that one. We ate dinner with the Patriarch and his Family (they're from El Salvador) and then we had some good lessons and I came back and ran again and showered and I'm ready for bed. So tired.

Sunday:
Today was a pretty normal day. Church was good and we learned all about how the Gospel and Jesus Christ are the greatest "fuentes de paz" (sources of peace) in our lives. We went back to the apartment, ate lunch, and then did some afternoon visits. We ate dinner with Hermana Leticia Gomez and had salad, pasta soup, pork carnitas with arroz y frijoles (rice and beans) and orchata (rice milk with cinnamon and spices) to drink and then peaches with whipped cream for dessert. It was delicious.

 One of the young men from the branch came out on visits with us tonight, and we met this new kid named Dixon. He's in 11th grade (so about 16 or 17 I guess?) and he seemed really excited to see us. He's talked to elders before but it's been a while, he said he wanted to come to church with us. He told us he just recently got in trouble and is in some after school programs because of it for the next 30 days but hopefully we can help him through that and get some things figured out with him. I'm excited! Hermano Lopez gave us a whole bunch of protein powder before we went in for the night (his son was the one who went out with us so that was convenient) and then to celebrate P-Day eve we baked some more cookies haha. I'm pretty sure we've baked over 200 this week, we gave most of them away though so we wouldn't be tempted to just sit here and eat them. The dough was great though! You know me, can't help myself around some cookie dough/brownie batter! Can't wait to read your email tomorrow!

My studies are going really well. I'm studying in the Spanish scriptures only, I started the Book of Mormon in Spanish and I've been reading through. I just finished Jacob, I used the institute manual from the Gospel Library app to help me understand the Isaiah chapters of 2 Nephi and Jacob 5 (the olive tree allegory). It was amazing to see how much more I understood that way, good for y'all for keeping up your reading!

From his email to his Aunt Tammy:

 Spanish word of the week: "cachete" it means cheek, because I ate cow cheek this last week haha. It was kind of weird but not bad at all! Another word is "sempiterno" which means everlasting. The Savior has everlasting love for each and every one of us and that is a huge blessing!

Madre, I love you so much. Thanks for keeping me updated on the family and life and all that, I really appreciate it! I'm already looking forward to emailing with you next week, I miss you a lot but I want you to know you and the family are always in my prayers and heart. Thanks for the beach messages, those were awesome! (while spending the weekend at the beach we wrote him messages in the sand!) Keep up the good work with eating healthy, I'm working on it too! Thank you for being the best Madre I could have ever asked for, and please know that I think about y'all every day. I love you and I'll email you next week!

One from "The Gang"

One form Sophia

Love, 

Scottie