Average Week, with Extras - Week 55

This week was pretty average! Just a lot of trade offs!

I don't have a whole lot of time today and I'm sorry, but probably the greatest story from this week was probably when Elder Harding and I went contacting and were able to find this woman who is so prepared for the gospel it is crazy! She loves the Book of Mormon and is so excited to read it and study it!

This week was great with a whole lot of miracles and I'm sorry that you'll just have to take my word for it!

Love you forever! have a good one!

Elder Dorrance

EXTRAS

Response to Mom asking about the Barbados branch:

The branch is strong-ish They have a lot of less actives just like anywhere else, but they have got a good showing every week, so that's good.They have the first chapel in the West. Indies actually... Barbados was the first Island opened for missionary work! Kind of cool... haha. There are some members that are still active that remember President Hintze coming to do the first missionary work! So that is pretty cool! (President Hintze is a member of our stake presidency and the first missionary to work on the island of Barbados)

Response to our ward young men leaders asking for an account of daily activities:

 So in a typical day we wake up at 630 and after waking up, praying, and sitting on the couch for a few minutes to REALLY wake up, we start exercising. sometimes it's just a few push-ups and sit ups, or we go for a run.

Then while one of us is showering the other one is making/eating breakfast. Usually oatmeal here in Barbados because I found instant Quaker oatmeal and some hot chocolate, wakes you right up!

Then at 8 we have personal study where we study the standard works and preach my gospel, then we have companionship study at 9 where we sing a hymn, read the white handbook, share what we learned during personal study, and do a role play or two and make plans for our day.

Then at ten we head out, sometimes it's hard to set 10 o'clock appointments, so we usually end up contacting which basically means we ride our bikes into a place with a lot of houses and yell inside until someone comes out. It's not the most fun, but it works. We do this all the while trying to teach when we find until about 1130 or 1200 then we head back home for lunch.

After lunch we head to any appointments we have set or more contacting. In the area I am in right now here in Barbados we are some of the first missionaries out here so we do a whole lot of finding and contacting. Then we really just do that the rest of the day, we may stop to grab a drink and a snack here and there, but that is really the gist of it.

The fun part of contacting is that you can really just have fun with it, just a few days ago, me and my companion elder Barlow played a couple of guys in dominoes to take 15 minutes of their time in a lesson if we won. Of course we won and we had a great lesson with them! It was awesome!

At about 9 we head home and plan for the upcoming day and then shower, relax a little, maybe eat something, and write in our journal then it's off to bed!

p-day volleyball on the beach