Week 81: March 9, 2019 - Purpose Phones

Hey Fam!!!!
We had a pretty busy week. We had Zone Conferences this week. We had to do lots of preparation for them. But, it turned out to be fun. It was a lot about technology and how President Fillmore wants to prepare us for the future and wants us to develop good habits now. I liked that and made some goals for creating good habits with my use for technology.

A neat idea that President has was calling our phones "purpose phones." I liked that, technology is here to further our purpose, not to distract or take away from it. One of the many things he taught us was that before we use our smart phones, we should have a purpose in mind. Once we have accomplished our purpose, we put our phones away. I liked that and I will try to implement that for the rest of my life.

Elder and Sister Garrard got me a special gluten free meal for the zone conference!!! So nice of them!!!!

Pose pics with Elders at the zone conference!!! (Left to right: Elder Awesome, Elder Bishof (hiding in between us), Elder Fonseca, Elder Barbosa, Elder Lewis, Elder Piscone (from my same mtc group))

It was awesome!!! To be honest, there was one part we were waiting for other people to ride back to the mission office. The whole time, I was sort of going back and forth trying to find something to do. It was one of those situations where you are just waiting, nothing is happening, and there is nothing you can do about it. I felt like I had to be doing something, but then I remembered what Mom and Dad said to me in our last video call. They said, "don't mistake activity for achievement." I was looking for something to make myself busy when I could have had a quality conversation with people that were waiting too.

Our work with people is more important that any other. So, I stopped and talked to a few people while we waited. We ended up only waiting for a few more minutes when I decided to do that, but neat to see how Mom and Dad are always teaching me and telling me exactly what I need! You guys are awesome!!!

We also got to go out and visit tons more this week!!! Elder Doughman and I have made some goals to be out more. We got to visit our friend Miguel. He is doing super well and feeling tons better from the last time we saw him. He had a fungus infection in his arm. It was swollen so bad!!!! We gave him a blessing and the next time we passed by, his arm looked like it was back to normal, it just had a huge scab on the side, poor guy. We are prepared to show him how he could hear our modern day apostles on the church website. I listened to some talks in Portuguese while I have been working in the office so I could practice my Portuguese listening, and I found one by Elder Soares when he talked in his native language, Portuguese, at general conference! I was so excited when I saw that!!! We showed it to Miguel. Miguel gets so excited about stuff, I love it! He got up on his feet and did this shuffle bounce that only Miguel does. It was super cool. We also got to visit a few less actives.

Elder Doughman and I are having tons of fun visiting people, but it seems like we are thinking so much about just visiting that we forget to plan out our visits. We are gonna work on visiting with purpose and an action in mind. Thats been one though on my mind a lot recently.

More me being spoiled pics:

I found gluten free brownies at the store and the sisters made them for us, they were so good!!!!

Elder Shriber once again shared his goods with us!!!

I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such generous and thoughtful missionaries!!!

For Pday today, we went to an abandoned observatory building!! It was so cool!!! I brought the frisbee you guys sent me and we threw that while we hiked around it. So much fun!!!