We decided to stay in Steamboat for Preparation day because we missed an appointment last time we went with the other missionaries, and we had that same appointment today. We met a recently returned missionary from Ohio while we were cleaning the truck, and he told us some crazy stories from his mission!

On Saturday, we took the time to drive out to Jeddito again, and we met some great people! One of them is named Tasha. When she opened the door she was super happy to see us and said that she was a 'believer' too, and that she wanted us to teach her kids! Sadly, there wasn't another adult male in their home, so we couldn't go in, but she set up an appointment for Sunday! We were super excited to finally find some new people to teach. We also found Sister Norris, who simply doesn't have the means to make it to church, but would probably be an active member if she had some sort of transportation. 

Well, we went by Tasha's home on Sunday and I guess they were having a family emergency, so they couldn't meet with us. Hopefully we will be able to meet with them some other time. The same day, we visited Sister Bowman, who is very old and gets lots of visitors. When we got there she she was like "Why are you even here?" and we said that we were there to check up on her, and she suddenly started giving us chores to do outside her house, like readjusting the tarp over her wood pile and raking up wood pieces and stuff like that. After we were done, she invited us in, but she didn't have another man home and we tried to tell her, but she wouldn't hear us, so we sort of maybe just went in her house and gave a quick prayer! Yeah!

For the rest of the day we visited a bunch of people and met some new faces that weren't very interested in what we had to hear, and before we went to bed we got a text from Sister Lincoln asking us to come over and bring a small bowl, so we went over there and she gave us some Navajo tacos and potato salad! We thanked her for her kindness, drove home and turned in for the night.

Happy Halloween!

 Practicing Navajo on a whiteboard with President Yazzie

A baby Tarantula! Interesting.  

 some sheep me and Elder Asher herded for Pres. Yazzie

 Burrs that the sheep were coated in. And I mean coated! 

What happens when you try to pet a mean cat 

---------------------------------------

I have made up my own version of the Charlie Brown theme song on the piano, and I have the general pattern down for it. I just don't know how the rest of the song goes! I think it would be super fun to start learning the real thing, though.

I have found that Duolingo is very limited in Navajo right now, but I have been logging in every day and keeping in check my knowledge of the limited Navajo that it can teach me. Also, not having the voice to help with the learning makes it really difficult to know how it actually sounds, so I have found the best way to learn is from the people themselves. 

Hagooshineh! (It means goodbye, in response to Hagooshii' which is another way to say goodbye)

We were very busy over the past week, but we didn't find very many people, despite our best efforts. We did meet some people out in Jeddito, which is an area we cover here in Steamboat. The husband of the couple we met out there is a medicine man, and he really likes to meet with the missionaries. 

Other than that, we have been mostly chopping wood. Chopping wood has become something that I look forward to. I just really like doing it, especially if it's for someone else! 

Well, sorry for the short email. I am really enjoying Steamboat with Elder Asher, he's the best.

Hagooneh!

 Stick bug

 Tarantula

 Lizard

We don't dress up on Halloween, but I had the idea of switching name tags for a day.  We turn in at 6pm on Halloween.

Monday

We gave our truck a deep-clean this morning at the fire station with permission from Brother Begay. The sprayer we used was super powerful! It rained pretty much the whole time we were cleaning the truck. The weather has turned cold in the past week or so, and it has been raining off and on almost every day. After cleaning the truck, we drove out to Ganado and helped them clean their truck in the rain, too! That was pretty much our P-day. 

Tuesday

We had zone conference today in Gallup! Elder Wadsworth talked a lot about truck maintenance and some of the rules associated with driving the truck. We got a free flu shot and free lunch provided by some members down in Gallup. Some of the bigger missionaries had to use a huge needle when they got their flu shot, it looked pretty scary! After lunch, Elder Wadsworth announced the winners for the truck competition. If you don't know what that is, it's a a competition previously set up by President Adams and is being continued by President Ackerman where the missionaries with the cleanest truck win an award. We got 2nd place out of the zone, and the Ganado missionaries got first! After zone conference, I picked up my blue suit (I hadn't had my blue suit in over a transfer because I accidentally left it in Farmington) and we went to Walmart to buy some food and stuff, then we drove back to Steamboat and turned in for the night.

Wednesday

We had interviews with President and Sister Ackerman in Steamboat this morning. They brought a bunch of snacks and candy for us to have, which was super nice of them! After the interviews, we drove out to Ganado to meet the Window Rock missionaries and exchange with them. I, Elder Asher and Elder Vea would be together in Window Rock for the day, and Elder Benson (Elder Vea's companion and the district leader) would be with the Ganado missionaries. Elder Vea showed us around Window Rock, introducing us to some nice people along the way. Elder Asher was the driver today. After the day was over, we went over to the Zone Leader's house (Elder Black and Elder Hunt) and we played the card game "Scum" with them for the rest of the night. It was way fun!

Thursday

We drove to Ganado this morning and dropped off Elder Asher so that he can get back to Steamboat on an exchange with Elder Benson, then I drove back to Window Rock with Elder Vea. I was the driver today, so that's fun. We chopped wood in the morning for an old lady and pulled up dead vegetable plants in some people's garden. Our last visit today was really weird because we, totally unprovoked, got this drunk guy really upset and he went and told his girlfriend (She was drunk, too) and she came out and started complaining about how inhumane people are and how we are terrible people and stuff like that. We just sat there until she cooled off a little bit, then we offered to share a message with her and she said okay, so we shared a quick scripture (Quick because we wanted to get out of there) but she wanted to share some messages with us from her little book of scriptural references. After talking for maybe another half-hour (She is still upset, somehow) we were finally able to get out of there with the help of a nice member who had been sitting there during the whole exchange. I had no idea what to think about that appointment after we left. To brighten up the mood a little, me and Elder Vea returned to the Window Rock missionary trailer and played some card games.

Friday

I and Elder Vea drove down to Ganado to exchange back into our normal companionship, and Elder Asher and I drove back to our trailer in Steamboat and did a lot of studies and planning. Honestly, not the most exciting day of the mission.

Saturday

We chopped a lot of wood today. In the morning we chopped wood for Sister Bowman, a super old lady with a funny personality, and she gave us some Sprite, bologna sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies and vienna sausages for helping her. We also helped Sister Lincoln chop some wood, and she gave us some delicious pears and apples from her fruit trees. After that, we visited President Yazzie and ended up helping him chop some wood as well, and he gave us a bunch of chips, gatorade, cereal, and pie. We were definitely blessed for all the service we did today!

Sunday

In sacrament meeting today I played the piano, prepared and passed the sacrament, gave a short talk about the new changes announced in general conference and did the Sunday school lesson with Elder Asher. President Yazzie made a comment while I was playing "How Great Thou Art" for the prelude about Elvis Presley singing this song. After church hours ended, we participated in a linger-longer and had some good food made by the members. When we were able to go out and start visiting people, we walked across the street to the NHA housing and we were finally able to talk to Irene again! She is going through some back and shoulder pain, so she will be gone for about a week. The last visit we made today was with Robert and his wife. We found out that his wife Liona has been wanting to go to a Relief Society meeting on Wednesday, but has either been too busy or too tired to go. Hopefully we can minister to them until they decide to come back to church. After that visit, we returned to the trailer and did some language studies, then turned in for the night.

RECENT CHANGES TO MISSIONARY WORK

-We need to read the Book of Mormon as a companionship for 30 minutes every day.

-We now need to learn our testimonies in the Navajo language, so we are allotted at least 30 minutes of language study every day.

-We are to find a scripture for each section in chapter 3 of "Preach My Gospel" and memorize it. There must be at least 50 sections in chapter 3 of the "Preach My Gospel", so this is going to take a very long time.

I am excited for the new changes, especially for learning more of the Navajo language! We are allowed to use the app "Duolingo" in order to learn languages. Hopefully I can progress in the language enough to be able to do as President Ackerman directs.

Hagooneh!

--------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, it's getting pretty cold here. It's quite wet! We need to be careful about which roads we drive on. 

On my weekly email to the mission president, I usually just tell him how I have improved physically, spiritually and mentally. I also tell him a miracle that happened over the past week and how my family is doing.

Dang, I miss grandpa's apples. I didn't realize how spoiled I was about apples until I came on the mission. We bought apples from a lady a couple of weeks ago, and they tasted really good, but weren't very big and they had a lot of blemishes on them. Now they are wrinkling in the fridge because we bought too many! 

President Yazzie's sheep are absolutely COVERED in those spiky burrs from that one weed!

Ya'at'eeh! It's been a blast serving here so far, even if there's not too much to do in the confines of Steamboat. It snowed yesterday, which is pretty exciting! Winter will put a hindrance on the work in Steamboat because all the roads are dirt roads. Me and Elder Asher tried to go out and see some people yesterday, but the roads were so slick that we had to turn around after about a minute of straight drifting on mud. We had to do an infinity-point turn and slide our way back onto the highway. We were basically driving sideways the whole time, it was crazy!

General conference was great, even though nobody showed up at the chapel except us and President Yazzie. I'm really starting to notice that there has been a lot of talk about the second coming, and the changes that are being made in the church make me think that it is coming very soon. 12 new temples! 2 hour church! More family time! It's all very exhilarating to me how different things are going to be.

Well, thanks for everything you do! Sorry about the shorter email, I didn't find the time to type out a longer one. Hagoshii'!

------------------------------------------------------------

I like Chinese food! That's all I can think of right now. I still dislike cottage cheese, though.

I think the talk that caught my attention the most was the one by Robert C. Gay. It made me sad to hear the poor condition of a dying family. James E. Talmage was super Christ-like when he decided to help them with their dire situation, and even caught some of the disease himself as a result.

I have had a lot of success with finding, but teaching and baptizing isn't really happening too much. We had only the Branch President at church yesterday to watch General conference with. There were some good talks, though! There were also a lot of condolences for M. Russell Ballard, too. I am excited for the 2 hour block because it gives us more time to do missionary work, and in the future more family time. 

Find an good rocks?  Not really, but there are a ton of pottery shards here! I guess we aren't supposed to pick them up because we will get 'cursed' according to the Native Americans here.

Yes, I am very used to the dogs. There are still tons of dogs around here, and I'm pretty sure everybody in Steamboat has at least 3 of them. To these people, it is a necessity! 

Monday

Me, Elder Asher, and Elder Cahoon mostly just sat around the house and played board games because we had nearly reached our mileage limit on our truck so we couldn't really drive anywhere. We attended a party later in the evening and it was for Elder Cahoon because he was leaving. There was some really good food at the party! 

Tuesday

We drove all the way out to Gallup to drop Elder Cahoon off at the stake center there. We said our goodbyes to him and before we left the parking lot, we were stopped by some missionaries who asked us to join them in a blessing for a lady who had randomly pulled into the church parking lot. We gave her a blessing inside the church building and then we went back to the truck and drove to Walmart. I finally met Elder Linford at Walmart! If I remember correctly, he is closely related to my grandmother from Oklahoma. After getting past some angry people and escaping Walmart, we drove back to Steamboat and made it to one appointment on time with Hannah (Nice old lady) and we were super late for our next appointment to the point where we couldn't meet with them. We did go and see her to reschedule though, and we ended up getting her to come to our Book of Mormon class! Random miracle of the day! After the Book of Mormon class, we played ping-pong for a bit and turned in for the night.

Wednesday

Now it's just me and Elder Asher. This is the first transfer that I haven't gotten a new companion, which is pretty crazy. Since our mileage on our truck was really high, we couldn't go to many places. We ended up walking across the street and meeting a bunch of new people at the neighborhood over there. We also went to visit a man we met a while back named Arvin, but he wasn't interested. He just wanted to talk to someone, I think. We visited President John later in the evening since he hasn't been feeling to well. We shared a scripture with him, talked for a bit and then left for home.

Thursday

We had district meeting this morning, and I got to meet the new missionary in our district. He is Elder Wensel, and he was only three days out when I met him today. We went to Pizza Edge after our meeting and then went back to our areas. We spent the rest of the day trying to visit people. We visited Laura and helped her get some water from her neighbors and shared a scripture with her. We also visited Sister Lincoln, who showed us her fruit trees! She had pears, apples and peaches. They were super tiny because she didn't thin her trees, but they were really good! I played board games with Elder Asher for a bit when we turned in.

Friday

We tried to meet with Irene this morning, but Marvin answered the door and said that we could meet Monday. We tried to tell him that it would be best to meet us after 6:00pm on Monday, but he strongly insisted that we meet at 4:00pm. So we are meeting him at 4:00pm on Monday. So that happened. We later visited with Tom James and we talked about CPR (Church Pray Read) and how it keeps us alive spiritually. We ran out of things to do, so we  cleaned the chapel, which needed it. A man named Shawn approached us from the street and he was strongly under the influence of alcohol. It really looked like he wanted to fight us at first, but then we started to talking to him and we offered a prayer for him. He took his shirt off and did weird gestures and stuff during the prayer, then as we were leaving, he asked Elder Asher to give him a prayer too, and he did all thee weird gestures again while kneeling on the ground during the prayer. We escaped after the prayer and turned in for the night.

Saturday

We drove out to meet a man named Robert across the street and we helped him weed his yard. We spent a lot of the day conducting a phone audit, and later we found where Shawn lives by randomly tracting into his house. We prayed for him again and went on our way.

Sunday

We had a member of some presidency in another ward come and preside over sacrament meeting. That was good because none of the presidency showed up in the morning. We started our meeting with only one person in the congregation, and people slowly trickled in as the meeting went on. I played piano and blessed the sacrament today, as well as bore my testimony because it's fast Sunday. After church we visited Sister Jim and taught her the CPR lesson. We drove home and turned in after that. I am enjoying this companionship so far!

Thanks for all you do.

____________________________________________

I'm looking forward to conference, too! Considering the amount of changes made in the last conference, I think there will be lots of change in this one, too. 

Yep, I'm with Elder Asher. He is a great missionary. Ever since I've been his companion, people always talk about how tall he is and how short I look compared to him.

I don't know everyone yet, but I must be pretty darn close! I have even met most of the drunk people that hang out next to our trailer across the fence.

--------------------------------------------

Elder Linford serves in Manyfarms.  

Don't drink coffee.