WEEK 19 - Still Not Buying Boots

I used to think that the only people who could pray for cool things were people in the scriptures. I thought that people like me could only pray for lame stuff like moisture and service opportunities. I remember multiple times back home praying that my student gov leaders would stop being bums and give me an A, or that my dad would just straight up forget that we needed to mow the lawn, or that women would find me insanely attractive, pretty much just stuff like that. But for some reason none of those ever worked. I would wake up excited to see this whole prayer thing work, and my Dad would be like "lets mow the lawn son" and I'd be like: "dang it, welp, I guess prayer doesn't work, oh well." Well guess what I figured out? Prayer does work. Quite well. I found out that it is about your intentions. I realize now that there is a difference between 6th grade me praying to wake up with a medical emergency so I can skip mountain bike practice and missionary me praying for my friends to feel the love of God in their own lives. It is literally all about the intentions in your heart, and your faith that God can actually bless you with what your asking for. Like for example 5 weeks ago I started praying every Sunday morning before church that someone random I haven't met would just show up to church and be interested in hearing our message. It is quite the bold ask, because that is incredibly rare around here. But I completely believe that God can make it happen, so I go to church every week in full belief that someone new is coming. Ladies and gentlemen I am 5/5 and I am not even kidding. It is insane every week. This week it was a random chinese elderly couple who moved here a month ago from China, and randomly decided to walk 15 minutes to our church that they have never been to once in their whole lives. Moral of the story folks is that I thoroughly believe that if you attempt to pray for something that is actually a good thing and have faith, then I know it can happen. Ahhhhhh I love all of you so much, and miss you so muchhhhhh. Let me tell you about my week, and maybe you can tell me about yours hehe: - I felt like my Dad at the beginning of this week. My Dad makes terrible economic decisions almost every time I am with him at a restaurant. He does this thing where whenever we are out with friends or family and it comes time to pay, he loves to make sure that the waiter takes his card and the bill is completely on him. It is a very selfless trait I guess, but overall its very financially irresponsible (just kidding, your a good man dad). This week we had interviews with our mission president, and before the interviews some of us missionaries went to Torchy's for lunch. Torchy's is so good, so you can imagine how excited I was when some random lady came up and handed us money for lunch. We had $80 and me and Elder Harper were last in line. We got to the front and I was like "how much is our bill so far?" and she said it was $91. This landed me and Elder Harper in quite the predicament. So me and Elder Harper got the wonderful opportunity to not only purchase our own food with our own money, but to cover the extra charges for the other missionaries. I saw the person who gave us money after and I went over and gave her an extra special thank you. It felt like the story where Jesus healed the 10 lepers and only 1 came back and thanked Him. But in this story there were 8 lepers and only 6 got healed, and I was the only one to come back and to say thank you, and I still had leprosy. Idk, it made me a little mad especially when I went to the table and saw that Elder Campbell had probably racked up 35% of the bill on his meal. And the sister missionaries who were with us took like 4 bites and were like "oh heavens, wow! I am full!" Then we had interviews and they were great, so that made up for being scammed. - So I went to like a hard core Texan boot barn this week. Idk if you have read my previous emails, but I do not have a strong desire to buy boots while im here in Texas, but I wanted to talk to people so we went to this boot shop. I got in there and most of these people seemed like hard core boot people. I don't quite fit in with this crowd, but I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about there culture. So I found the employee who seemed the most like a boot person and started asking her some questions. I soon figured out (without her telling me) that they make commission off these boots. I asked what the most expensive boots were, and she showed me these $2000 crocodile skin boots. I then asked her "I have never owned any boots, so what would you say is the best starter boot?" She did not like that comment very much so with her texan accent she was like "are ya talking about lady boots?" I had literally no idea how to respond to that so I was like "sorry" and she went back to selling me these crocodile boots. I was eager to know more, so I asked her if boots go up in value as time goes on. So she just straight up lied to me and was like "definitely! I mean these crocodile skin boots are gonna be extremely valuable in 10 years." Idk if we are running out of crocodiles or something, but for all of my money people out there you might want to hop on that investment opportunity. I had absolutely zero intention of buying any boots so I said a comment that I now kinda regret. She was like mid speech on why these are the best boots that have ever existed and I was like "you got any vegan boots in here perchance?" I thought it was funny, but the boot people did not think that was funny except this one dude who was trying on boots next to us who started dying laughing as soon as I said that. The boot people were like "no" and then they like stopped selling to me, so that was funny. But we actually had a lot of good conversations in there, so it was surprisingly a good use of time. - So Elder Campbell does not get offended by almost anything. The key word is almost. Because today I found out what he actually gets offended at. Language skills. Oh my goodness. So today at church we get there and Peter Chen decided to drop a nuclear bomb on Elder Campbell. I'm not gonna say exactly what he said, but it just went along the lines on how much better my chinese is then his. To be fair I have learned this language for 9 years, and he only did 2. He loves to pride himself on his studies and on how good his chinese is, so this made him very mad at me for some reason. So for the rest of the day the only thing I have heard from him is how much he is about to grind chinese before his mission ends, so wish my man luck. We passed the sacrament today at church and it was normal until I got to the children who were all hanging out in the corner drawing. Felicia (one of the kids) had the idea to take like 3 water cups, and so they all did. I was like "hey guys, we probably shouldn't do that." and they just like attacked me the rest of the time. It was kinda a challenge to renew my covenants when I was being physically assaulted by like 4 children while I was passing. So we had a lot of friends at church today. Elder Campbell usually likes to sit by me at church while I sit by people we are teaching. This week there were to many people to have him sit by me, so I was like "hey lets split up this time, so that we can make sure all of our friends have someone to sit by." He was like "ok I'll go over to Sonia and Flora (our two friends that he is most comfortable with)" I was just so excited that he was willing to do a little missionary work, so I was pumped. So I got up and went to go sit by our friends, and he just sat still. I was like "ah he probably just is waiting for the song to end." The song ends, and he was still where he was. Then I thought to myself 'ok, I see. He probably wants to just get through the first talk or something." Wrong. Anyways, he spent the entire time just loitering in the same spot, because he claimed that he "didn't want to interrupt the Spirit of the meeting." So while I was out there rotating from person to person like a dang rotisserie chicken during the meeting, he just sat there reverently. But ya, that made me quite annoyed. - So this week was cool. Time is going so fast, I will see you all soon its crazy. I love you guys so much and hope your week is wonderous. Please reach out to me if you feel the desire to! See you next week! Google Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qwGY1QhS99ne5wGy8 Pictures: 1. Dinner with danny at torchys (it was fun) 2. I would like to retire and live in florida 3. Crocodile skin boots 4. Massive Christmas blow up 5. Best facebook post ever