Last P-day I said goodbye to everyone in Mountain Shadows/Academy ward. It was pretty sad for me because I'd made some pretty good friends, and there was a lot of people that I wanted to baptize. I also went to the Army Surplus store which was so cool because we don't have them in Canada. There was all kinds of cool things like machetes, night sticks, army clothes, MRE's, pistol grips/scopes/magazines/rails etc. Lots of cool stuff there. It was one of my lifelong dreams to go to an army surplus store. You would say Lame, but I say awesome.
Alright, so I made it to Alamosa safe and sound with my new companion Elder Terry who is from Parker, ID. It's a town of about 8500, and so missionary work here is fairly interesting. Especially because we have 4 elders in our one apartment, so when you tract a street, you pretty much just offer service because everyone here is either Mormon or Catholic, and very satisfied with their current choices. And has already had the missionaries at their door 10 times in the last month. So a lot of the work we do centers around Less Actives and Part Member families. Also because it's super cold here. Haha, one cool quote I've heard is that "all weather is good weather" which is true because if it's warm, it's good weather, and if it's cold, people are more likely to let you in which is awesome!
Oh, here's something else: One of the new elders that just came in is ranked #8 out of 11 million Tetris players, and paid for his mission by playing Tetris competitively. Don't tell your kids that haha.
So I'm liking the area a bit more and more. It was weird, I apologize, but I've never felt really homesick towards home, but when I moved from my last area to this area, I actually felt kind of homesick for my last area. I never realized how awesome it was, until I got here. And not that this area is bad or anything, but it's not MS/Academy. Our apartment does have a bit of a Carbon Monoxide problem which makes things quite fun haha. Not serious or anything, the alarm hasn't gone off for like 6 months, but it just makes you tired all the time. So personal study is quite difficult. Also I'm pretty sure there is no insulation or something, because it's always freezing inside. But hey, whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger right?
So now on to missionary stuff. We are teaching one person right now, and have a few potentials. We taught a First to this one lady, who is catholic, and it's really kind of tough for us because she has repeatedly said that she believes us that our church is true, but when we invited her to be baptized, she is having a hard time accepting that she needs to be rebaptized. All her kids and ancestors are catholic too, which makes it very hard for her. It's really tough to switch religions when you are catholic because of all the tradition involved, so I admire all those who do make the jump. Her name is Dorris, and we are praying very hard for her!
We were tracting this street, and saw this guy stacking a big pile of wood in his garage. So we helped him out, talked a bit about him and where he's from etc. He didn't really seem that interested in the gospel or anything, which is totally fine. But at the end, as we were walking away he said "hey, how about you guys come back around this same time tomorrow, I want to hear what you guys preach" EPIC. So we went back the next day and he wasn't there, but we are still trying to get in contact with him!
There is this one guy in our ward (Alamosa 3rd ward btw) who is named Tony. He's 29 years old, but has the mind of probably an 8 year old. We love him so much, he's so funny. We go over to his house occasionally to help him install farming computer games, and other fun activities. His life dream is to own a 35 million dollar ranch. He has this binder filled with hundreds of pages of animals that he's going to buy, houses, vehicles, costs, electricity, utilities, and it's so detailed! But the other night, we were helping him with his e-mail account (some of you are thinking that this isn't missionary work/we are wasting our time, but he is borderlined less active, and we usually only spend maybe an hour a week at his house helping him with stuff, and it's always a cool experience) and this ad popped up that Wikileaks let out thousands of documents about iraq, and I started thinking about all the news I was missing and so it was kind of rough for me for about 30 seconds. Then i refocused and it was all good.
We were tracting and I saw a dog puke up a whole biscuit and bury it in the ground. It was pretty odd.
I had to teach a lesson in Elders Quorum about baptism and it went pretty well, especially since I managed to slip in an Indiana Jones reference "The penitent man may pass". Which is always a plus.
Also, it's kind of funny, my area is the biggest area in the mission, and we are on bikes, so when we bike all the way out to the middle of nowhere it can be a tiring experience. It's nice because it's completely flat here, so there is no hills, but there is this wind that is constantly blowing, and it's cold. And big trucks drive by and almost knock us off our bikes with the air wave that they blast out. It can be frustrating when you bike for an hour to get to a street, and find 2/12 houses have people home. But I found a real Fedora in the desert while biking home, so that was cool.
Trying not to freeze to death
Elder Gibb
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