You're not going to want to miss reading this! (Sorry it's so late, I have been out of town)

It was a very memorable week...I'll put it that way.

Monday night we went to the Stevens for dinner and we had a great time.  We made plans to clean up Micah's (brother Stevens) horse saddle this week for him.  Sister Stevens also gave me this Doterra oil mixture that is supposed to ease my twitches and stuff so we'll see how this goes haha.

Tuesday, we had a bit of a surprise!  Elder Ortiz, or Will, came and showed us a visit!  We talked a bit and went to the Rogers for lunch after district meeting.  We also had a lesson with a less active and his non-member brother and a few other non-members!  A couple are promising and we're hoping to baptize a couple of them!  The brother and the son and daughter of the lady living with him (she's not interested but has had a few blessings from us that have worked 🤔 weird I know).  The brother, Mike, will most likely end up being baptized!  He's been to church a bunch so it's just a matter of teaching.  We also got Micah's saddle and we started cleaning it!  Elder Hill is gonna make a cowboy outta me yet.  Now I just need my boots and hat.

Wednesday, we woke up early and worked on the saddle again.  It was starting to look mighty purty.  We also had more service with Micah.  We helped another guy move.  I also got the chance to edge a few lawns!  You have no idea how happy that made me.  Talk about memories.  Never thought I would miss yard work like I do.

After that we got the guy working with us to commit to coming to church!  So that was awesome.  We were told by our ward mission leader to not do service for members unless we cleared it with him...I'm still not good at following rules I guess cause every time we break a rule we get referrals and people to teach :/. Darn, it's almost like it's a made up rule to gain control.  *imaginary tear drop rolling down my face*.

After that we walked 9 miles to get told to come back next week...SCORE!  My feet and Elder Hills were completely toast.  We came home, drenched in sweat from a 90 degree day and just tore off our clothes and laid in bed.  Four hours of walking, but all was well cause we were honked at and waved to by some women.  Confidence booster, but doesn't help the fact we were dead.

Thursday, we went to Walmart to get a card so I could send to Kaeden, he's gonna love it by the way ;) and got a shirt that makes me so proud to be an American.  Yup.  I got another one 🇺🇸.  We finished up the saddle!  Yeehaw hoss!  We tracked Walmart while we were there too, to no avail.  I feel like I'm in Babylon.  Anyways, we taught Mike again and set a date with him!  He seems super down!  We invited him to church and everything and he is excited to meet again!  Hopefully we keep racking up baptisms so elder Hill and I can stay together!  We did a lot of dumb things later that night...well I did.  I wanted to know how bad getting hit with a ruler on my calves would hurt.  I took 4 hits.  3 from a golfer and 1 from Hill.  Goaslind (nicknamed goose in case I ever say Goose) killed me haha.  I'll send videos cause they're funny.  I'm still Kai sadly, sorry dad!

Friday, we had a 30-minute-long weekly planning session (it's supposed to be like 2.5 hours) because we literally have 3 people we are actually teaching.  So we planned for them and then deuced out to do some service for Micah again.  We moved stuff from the one guy we moved last week into a different storage unit.  And by stuff, I mean 12 eight feet tall grandfather clocks and countless other little clocks.  I guess Tom used to be a clock fixer dude.  I never thought I would be attracted to a grandfather clock!  Those things were NICE!

After we moved those we had to make room for them in the other unit so we moved a crap ton of furniture and trash out of this one unit and I thought I had the black lung...like I'm not kidding.  Elder Hill and I are drinking a bunch of water cause we're always walking and we have drunk about 2 or so gallons a day each.  We filled like 10 jugs of water at the spring on Monday and we only have 2 left...whoops.  And we still feel dehydrated.

We also are ALWAYS HUNGRY!!  I've never been this hungry.  Ever.  But we're working out a lot and we're in week 3 of the vertical jump workout and I can now dunk a football and almost hold onto the rim with both hands.  Look out SUU.  Oh and there's a corvette parade thing that went on both Friday and Saturday and I've never been so happy.  I was literally surrounded by my dream car, of every year.  From 60's to 2017 stingrays and I couldn't be happier.

Saturday, we were finally able to teach some more lessons!  We've taught a total of 4 in 4 weeks and 3 were this week!  We're being blessed!  We got back in contact with an investigator named Jeff.  He's super chill and laid back and he's gonna start coming for Thursday night volleyball!  We walked a lot and got rained on again cause servants of the lord get that kind of stuff a lot.  But we could hack it and not get too drenched.

Elder Isaacson, our District leader, went on exchanges with me and we found that almost every car passing by stared at us so we decided to make awkward eye contact with all of them.  We got some good laughs and made some people feel pretty dumb.  They try to be sly and kind of look out of the peripherals or barely over their gigantic sunglasses, but that don't trick us.  Some women were very...surprised...to see 2 handsome young men staring back at them...some even honked or winked.  I'd say the South only doesn't like missionaries because we have the potential of stealing their women!  I mean shoot, we own most of their hearts!  I will not apologize.

Now...with Sunday...nothing more could have gone wrong than what happened at this horrendous sacrament meeting.  I'm not kidding when I say I was baffled.  To begin, it started with miracles!  It starts at 9:30 and no investigators were there.  None.  So we open up with "Did you think to pray?" And I said a little prayer in my heart that they would show, and not even 30 seconds later 2 investigators come walking in within 15 seconds of each other!!  I almost lost it!  My comp and I split and sat by both!  But one older member made Elder Hill and Jeff move cause "that's her spot".  It was ridiculous.  And

The first speaker was wonderful!  But what happened next...no prayer could have saved this.  The second speaker is from Tonga and not an English speaker, but it wasn't a bad talk - until she took it upon herself to sing "The Spirit of God" in Tongan...bishop was speechless haha.  But the last speaker...his name is Crazy Dave, or Doomsday...he started off on obedience and ended off with Planet X, nuclear weapons, food storage, government secrets...it was a freaking mess.  Bishop had to get up and ask him to wrap it up. hahaha.

Our gators eyes were gaping wide...we didn't know what to say besides how sad we were that it happened!!  He even called out a member and said "oh I see him rolling his eyes!  In fact I see all of ya rolling your eyes!"  I didn't know whether to laugh or be shocked at what I was hearing!  I couldn't grasp what had just happened...AND THEN ANOTHER MEMBER SHOUTED OUT "you crazy old fool!" LIKE WHAT EVEN WAS GOING ON?!?!  And throughout sacrament music kept blaring on and off.  It was a week for the books.  I wouldn't blame Jeff or Mike if they never want to come back to church.

But all in all, it was a pretty good week!  We taught some dope lessons and talked to some dope people, even if there were a few who said some dumb things to us.  A woman literally used her daughter to tell us that "Jesus is the only answer" and then stopped and turned around and drove off...they literally went out of their way to tell us we don't believe in Christ...and then some guys were recording us while flipping us off and shouting "hail Satan"...so that took a lot of patience for me not to say something to them.  If I wasn't on exchanges, Elder Hill would have joined me in burning this whole place to the ground.  #SonsOfThunder.

Kings Do King Things
Goin' Buck Wild

Called to serve, wonderful aromas, and please: Forget the butt cheeks!

This week was a TON of service, I think we totaled out at 12 or 14 or so hours of it.  Lots of moving and lots of gross house cleaning.

Let me start with this freakin' house.  I cannot describe even in the slightest of how bad this house smelled; imagine a house full of dead, rotting cats and dogs, who's bowels still work...very well, then add rotting doors and meats inside of a broken freezer.  We cleaned out the freezer and I gagged and dry heaved the whole time.  They gave us masks and it didn't help at all.  I then, went inside to help get some things, and I kid you not this room was LITERALLY, and I mean 100% literally, covered in fecal matter.  Whether it was dog, cat, or human...I know not, but it was there and it was smelly.  Again, I threw up.  We stayed there for an hour and then deuced out and even denied lunch because we couldn't function.  That's most definitely going in my homecoming talk...but the moving was actually great.

Another act of service was for a member leaving to go on a mission with his wife and the other was for a non-member.  The members daughter had fallen away but was in tears for how grateful she was for us.  If we didn't show, they would have been moving for another day.  It was awesome.  It took 9 or 10 hours to do due to 5 HUGE cabinets and dressers and a 6 room 2 story house.  But, again, it was amazing.  The non-member move was also incredible.  He even took us out for dinner and he doesn't have much money so that meant a lot.  He put a pic of us on Facebook.  We don't know what he said, but he was in tears when talking to us.  Very nice guy.

Sunday we got a few Easter treats so that helped me be less homesick haha.  There's some members here who are just absolutely amazing.  I literally got choked up at how amazing some were.  Brother Micah Stevens told us to come by if we don't have meals or just to talk and practice teaching.  I've never met such a great man.  He reminds me so much of my dad!  When I come back to visit, he's on my list.  He was the one who we helped move the other members.  Other than all of that, we knocked doors and walked all week (over 200 doors and 0 new people to teach...life of a missionary).

Oh, we watched the Arkansas Derby.  The 2nd largest horse race in the USA behind the Kentucky Derby, so that was cool!  Granted, it was Babylon the entire time.  Women (whether they were 12 or 70) were dressed very skimpy and very...basically naked...but we were able to avoid it by going behind the track and getting an open view.  We literally, though, saw chicks' butt cheeks, literally hanging out of their freakin' pants.  It's like everyone wore super tiny rompers and daisy dukes and holy cow I saw more cheeks on people's rear than I did on their faces!  Huge sunglasses and hats covered them, so I'm guessing they just had to show off the other ones!  Like I had to stare into the friggin' sky!  If I looked down, I saw Satan in my face!  But all is well now.  Race season is over and people are back to their good ole Arkansas selves.

 All of our investigators dropped us and were dying of heat exposure...BUT we got a referral for a dad and daughter who wanna investigate and the daughter wants to be baptized so we're very hopeful for that!  My companion is a complete stud and I'm so happy here.  Oh and by the way those pictures you sent last week literally looked like you were a princess. (Dad edit: I have no clue what he is talking about here, but I'm scared...)

On Sunday I was really down and sad and homesick but I'm better now.  It's been one of those bitter sweet weeks.  We did so much work and got literally nothing in return.  I was pretty mad at God I'm not going to lie.  I'm getting better though and trying to look at the positives.  Like I said last week, missions are very hard but we're trying to make them better.  Word of the week: trying.  Cause sometimes that's all we can do. (Dad edit: I'm feeling faklempt, talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic: Proud dad moment - my boy's growing up.)

Kings Do King Things
Goin' Buck Wild

Notes on the videos:
1. What rain?  His hair is dry!
2. A handphone?  Seriously??
3. The most boring video ever made.

Here horsey, horsey...a country boy can survive...fisher of men and fishes.

Chillin' at the track...

Howdy howdy!

It's definitely been a week in the mission field!  Haha.  We mainly just knocked a ton of doors this week and got really nothing out of it.  We went fishing today!  I caught 4 in all but threw 2 back cause I'm not about those small fries!  We were out for about 3 hours and caught like 8 or so In total!  Again, threw 3 or so out.  When we went back to the apartment, we found out that crappies have literally no meat and so we just chucked them because it'd be too much work to gut and cook right now.  Maybe next week we'll keep some.  There's a member who lets us fish off of his dock in his back yard, it's legit.

Squattin' at the track...

At church this week, that little boy, A.J., that was with us at conference came and sat by us while his mom bore her testimony.  He's such a cute little bugger.  He came by and snuggled by elder Hill and I and it was the cutest thing that's ever happened to me.  He's like 4 or 5, I want to say.  Anyways, there's a reason God tells us to be like little children.  They're so innocent and loving, he just wanted to be by his missionaries!

Kids, the same everywhere...not at the track...

I also found out this week a family here lived in Syracuse.  They also went to Weber high and Weber state so that's cool.  They're names are the DeLongs and brother DeLong has the SICKEST beard!  He reminds me so much of dad though, it's funny.

This week we pulled a prank on the other elders.  I'll send videos because they explain it all haha.  In short, we baptized their beds in perfume and glitter...the outcome was unexpected...enjoy the videos!

We went to our first horse races!  We got a sick picture of us as they rode by, they go so freaking fast!  Like holy crap!  Elder Hill was freaking out cause he loves horses and lives on a ranch and so when we went he was jumping up and down like a kid in a candy store!  It was actually kind of adorable.

Posin' at the track.

We also found out that Jesus was a country boy.  In Mark 11, it says Jesus told the disciples to get him  an unridden horse.  When they get the horse, Jesus broke it and rode it.  So it confirms, JESUS WAS A COUNTRY BOY, HOSS!  YEE HAW!

Elder Hill and I are getting along wonderfully!  I love this dude so much.  I cannot even express it,

I hope all is well with y'all, love y'all!  Peace out hoss!

Kings Do King Things
Goin' Buck Wild

I don't know what this building is.

The force is strong with this one.

I silently correct his grammar in every email.

Glasses...we got glasses here!

A video blog post this week (I am unable to edit, view at your own risk)...and we are all his 'understands'

Fortunately nothing too offensive spewed forth out of the mouth of this child o' mine! :)  I will say this though, his understanding and use of Spanish...IS TERRIBLE...maybe you will pick up on it at the end.  Good thing he is English speaking, rather southern speaking.

Greater love hath no Elder...

He bleeds for the work.