Rap writing skills: A talent I'm certainly not hiding under a bushel

And boom! P-day! What a glorious thing! Sometimes it gets very stressful and then pday comes along and makes everything better. Ahhhh...

This week was pretty decent. Notable things were the tuesday P-day (bleh) the Labour day, A zone conference call, companion exchanges in La Jara (pronouced La hair-a...or as I like to call it La Hairy), first talk in a sacrament meeting as a missionary, and an emergency intervention or 2. All in all a pretty good week.

Got a chance to follow up with Ed Perry on his confirmation and stuff. He said that it felt "weird" but it was a "good weird" and he really did enjoy it. You can see a difference in him since it's happened. That's always an awesome thing to see as a missionary.

We got a new shower curtain and rod, and our new shower curtain has cute little tree frogs on it, so it brightens my day every time I walk in there. Did a bit of construction as well, learned how to hang drywall and other such things. Looks like we're going to be building a fence this week as well, so another good skill to tack on the list.

So we gave talks in church this Sunday. It was really good. Elder Hakes talked about inviting, I talked about bearing simple testimony (how to invite) and an RM spoke on who to invite. So we worked pretty well together, I remember sitting down thinking "I wish I'd talked more about the importance of home teaching and visiting teaching etc." but that was pretty much exactly what the RM spoke on, so it was a good experience with that. I think people enjoyed it and the stake president was there as well! The morning of, I thought to myself "I bet president Barr will be here today" but I shook it off and sure enough... So that was enjoyable.

Got a random voicemail one day from a less active who we've got to come back to church pretty consistently for the past 5 weeks. Basically "I don't think I can change. Stop wasting your time with me etc." trying to drop us. Well I was all like "THERE IS NO WAY" to my companion and called her up right away. We were talking to her and basically running to her house when our 1st ward mission leader pulled up behind us. Before he had a chance to say "need a ride?" I ran and jumped in the backseat and was like "GO GO GO" and he was just like "aye aye captain!" I'll admit I was a bit flustered. We just got completely blindsided by the call. Randomly out of the blue. We had talked to her a couple days ago and she was doing awesome. So got to her house, I knocked on the door while still on the phone with her and we sat down and talked a little bit. Could not figure out what was going on, so I just said "ok, lets just go to the scriptures" having no idea what to read. I felt like reading Alma 36 about his conversion. So we popped that open, and this may sound silly but she opened her book of mormon to the exact page we were planning on reading. I thought "hm that's funny" but to her she took that as kind of a sign that she needed to pay attention and it would be important. So we got it all taken care of. But then 2 days later got another call, exactly the same. This time we kind of let it drop, and she missed church but called us back sunday "Ok....I learned my lesson" basically, she felt terrible she missed church so now we got plans and goals for her. It was so stressful, we've come so far with her and then to have her drop us was heartbreaking. BUT we got her back! So it's awesome!

Went on exchanges in La Hairy this week. It was nice to be with a missionary who has been out longer than me. Good to get training and learn the things you can improve. We ate at a restaurant because they had no food, and while there, the song "Island in the Sun" came on....ohh it was a beautiful tender mercy. One of my favorite songs, and I've heard it twice this transfer! So that makes the number of Weezer songs I've heard on my mission: 3.

They taught Tony (catholic guy) while I was in La Jara. This time they got
-He wouldn't ever try to convert us to catholicism
-The holy spirit told him the Book of Mormon was true
-He wished he had been born a mormon

Later we talked to him (Elder Hakes and I) and he said "I told my priest I was reading the Book of Mormon. He said it would destroy my faith and it was dangerous. I told him it's great and I'm not going to stop reading it. I didn't tell him I'd been offered baptism" So he defended the Book of mormon....graghgghghg dfasjkfasdhlasdhasdfjklkl

That is my frustration at the fact he is not baptized yet. But we still love the guy. We're going to "put him on ice" for 2 weeks. he's a spirit junkie, so we'll cut off a bit of the supply and pretty soon he'll be calling us to come back. The only problem with our theory is he's reading the Book of Mormon every day so he is getting some degree of the spirit.

Also we had a "pump up" zone conference call. Now these have evolved over time. A couple months ago, they were really boring but then they'd have a cheering contest at the end. Kind of weird. The last one though they had a contest to see who could make the most gospel analogies with video games. There were some pretty funny things said. Need for Speed, Mario, Starcraft, and Halo were all used. Winner was Fox Creek. I went my own way and slipped in as many star wars references I could. I got 3 or 4 I think. But this last week, our district was in charge of "making it awesome". So I was commisioned to write some songs. I wrote one to the tune of Tik Tok, and then I wrote a rap to the tune of "It's all about the Benjamins". (Or "It's all about the Pentiums" if you prefer Weird Al's version. I know I do) All in all, a hit. There were even people from other zones who got in the call because they were curious. "And therefore it came to pass that the fame of Elder Gibb began to be spread thoughout all the land". Naw...as Elder Uchtdorf said "Don't inhale it" but it was pretty funny. Got props from people about it. See? you CAN have fun on a mission within certain bounds.

Well that should be good for today! My third companion Elder Summers leaves on Friday nooooo! And next week is transfers! Crazy huh! 6 weeks went fast.

Guess:
Elder Gibb: Stay and train
Elder Hakes: Trinidad! (haha! see, Trinidad is a place you don't want to go. So we joke about serving there. Now Trinidad has a nick-name, "Trim-me-nads" because it is where the most...uh...gender change operations are performed in the world...so it's a weird place) But actually probably NorthEast Zone

And that. Is that.
Elder Gibb