I Hate Dogs!

This week was very spiritually high and pretty suckish at the exact same time. On Tuesday I went on exchanges with the district leader. His name is Elder M, he came to our area and I went to the YSA area with his companion Elder B. Elder B is actually from Rigby, he was surprised that I knew exactly where that was! We went and talked to some people, it was pretty fun! I met a member of their ward who was 18, she was way hot but had a horrible personality so that was a bummer. She is going to BYU-I in the fall I think, I can't remember what her name was though, I think it was Haley, but it could have been Allison...anyways it was a fun day. Im not sure Elder M enjoyed being on a bike though, he didn't look happy when we exchanged back.

 The next two days were just like any other, we went out to try and find some former investigators, talked to some pretty cool people and did some normal missionary work. The crazy stuff happened on Friday and Saturday. N. called us at noon on Friday saying that he wanted to take a break from meeting with us. He has a lot of things on his mind and he needs to sort it out before he can continue, I asked what it was and he avoided the question. My gut feeling is that he ran into some anti Mormon stuff, so it is an easy concern to address. All I really have to do is say "you would not go to a Baptist church if you wanted to learn more about Catholicism" His doctor is a JW and doesn't like Mormons so that's what our assumption is, we are going to try and meet with him Tuesday though.

That same day I went on Exchanges with Elder J our zone leader. He is freaking awesome, we ended up talking until like 130am about anything and everything. We were talking  lot about apostate groups and how I think that if your not going to work than you may as well go home. Both of us actually decided to go on a 40 day fast. It is not a fast from food, it is a fast of fixing yourself. Each of the 40 days you progressively change things, for instance on day 1, Elder L and I will go to bed at 1030 sharp. Day 2, instead of waking up at 630 we will be awake at 629. So you progressively do these things over 40 days. It is going to be a hard 40 days but it wlll be SO worth it!

Saturday we ended our exchange and Elder L and I went to go visit a former investigator. On the teaching record it says to call out to her from the drive way because if we just walk in the gate, her dog will bite us. So we did everything like we were supposed to, we called out and her father came out to meet us, we talked to the Dad for a little while and the dog was banging on the gate trying to get out. I don't know how it happened but I glanced and saw the lock break, and the door slowly open. So I tried to shut the gate before the dog could get out but it was already halfway out. It squeezed out and lunged at me, I don't know how or why but I punched the dog in the face before it got a hold of my leg. So it only scratched me with its teeth instead of really sinking in. I got it off that first time but it lunged at me again but I was able to put my bag in the way and it bit a hole in my bag. By this time the owner had come out and grabbed it and kept apologizing and apologizing. I was only bleeding a little bit so that was ok. They invited us in and both became new investigators. The Dad and the daughter, his name is A and hers is L. They are pretty cool, so that story had a happy ending. I was really out of it that day because I had a huge adrenaline rush while fighting a dog, so I was totally out of it. I wish I could say it was a manly fight, but Im pretty sure I screamed  little bit, Elder Lewis says otherwise but I felt like I was screaming like a little girl. Im really scared of mean dogs ever since Jaleese got a big chunk of her leg bitten off during a family reunion. If I know the dog is nice than Im ok but if it is mean I get nervous. So that experience didn't help my resolve!

 Anyways this week was good, I hope all of you are doing good! The work here is pretty sweet, the members are awesome. A few members from Rosamond came down and took us out to lunch, they are really cool over there! Love you guys, have a good week!

Elder Carper

We call this the core, Elder Cox, Elder Angles, Me, Elder Gillies