This week was really hard for me, but it ended well. The first thing that happened was that our AC broke in the middle of the night on Thursday. The smoke alarm went off at 2 AM and the entire trailer filled with smoke because the wiring on the blower shorted and caught fire. The wires are totally fried. Our landlord is Brother Adams and he came to take a look at it on Friday. We had to move in with the other elders in their cabin because Bro Adams couldn't get someone to come out until today to fix it. I've ben sleeping on a couch the past
3 days. It's been fun living with them though. Other than that we didn't have a very productive week. We biked all over our area to try and see people during most off the week. No one was home. It was SO HOT this week too. It's starting to get into the 100's with 70%-100% humidity now. The Columbia area is the hottest part of the state.
Although we tried a lot of people and did our best to work with the members, I had a hard time this week because I feel like I didn't get anything accomplished at all. I constantly kept feeling like we weren't doing anything and it bothered me a little bit. I guess that's just what happens when there isn't much to do. Luckily on Saturday we were able to do some service for a Less active lady. We planted some flowers for her and then installed a window AC unit in her house. I talked to her a little bit about coming to church and so hopefully we can continue to work with her. She was a sweet lady. We also got in contact with another Less Active family and we hope that they will start progressing as we see them more. Ward council on Sunday was actually good too. Brother Patotzka brought up how the ward is not active in supporting the missionaries by letting us in and things like that. Bishop Christensen was supportive to us and we talked about what we are going to do as a Ward to start missionary work and make sure that the Ward doesn't dissolve into a branch (that's where it's headed). I thought the meeting may kickstart missionary work here and it gave Elder Pace and I hope after a
discouraging week.
At Zone Conference on Tuesday, President Turner gave a great talk to all of us about faith. We have a baptism goal of 720 for this year in our mission, and we are at about 175. He talked about how he thought about lowering the goal, but he feels like he shouldn't. He told us about how having faith throughout the mission and turning that faith into power we can accomplish the goal that God inspired him to set at the beginning of the year. I felt the Spirit really strongly when he talked about that with all of us. I knew that what he was saying was
true. I have been studying faith a lot and how I can use my own faith so that Elder Pace and I can get work going here and contribute to the goal that our mission has. It's been hard to not be discouraged, but I feel like things can go in a positive direction here if we do our best and give it time.
Hopefully we will be able to teach someone this week! I haven't been able to teach a lesson since I got here and I can't wait for the first opportunity I get!
Thanks for all of the prayers and thoughts for us. We need them!
Elder Sean Bills