Monday, we had Preparation day, and we went over to the Gauthier's and did Laundry and they fed us breakfast, they are some bomb members!
Wednesday, we had our much needed interviews with our mission President! I found out I am going Eternal with my Companion! We are going 3 transfers (4.5 months) together! The two Crystal goons continue! A lot of our district is staying the same too! Which is pretty rare as we all didn't change last transfer either. We had a really good discussion together and I am very grateful for my inspired mission President! After interviews we were really busy! We had a lesson with William Simba, who we taught earlier, but he went on extended vacation in Africa. He came back... but he's moving... in a week. So sad, because we were really excited to put him on baptismal date, but now he is moving to Wisconsin. When we were leaving he asked us if we wanted to eat some African Fried fish with him. Elder Hardwick immediately responded with I'm allergic, and so I asked for some "to go". 🤢it had eyes still
Needless to say I didn't eat it. After our visit with him we had a lesson with Charlie and we read some scriptures with him. Elder Hardwick fell asleep in the middle of reading a verse 
We had a pretty good laugh about it, and later after reading with Charlie we then threw down on him, and told him he needs to come back to church! (Hint, he came for the first time in a long time on Sunday!) We had Wild Boar for dinner, which is cheap buckets of wings. It is so tasty! Then we had more lessons! We had a lesson with a semi active family and will now be going over for short lessons, for the kiddos. After that we visited an inactive member we had never met, and he said he has been wanting to go to church, but no one ever contacted him
. So we arranged a ride for him and he came to church on Sunday as well!
On Thursday, we helped out at the Car Garage again, and this time we reorganized the tires (not the rims) and stacked them really high. We have a lot of fun there and it helps us stay busy. Usually during the week we have one day with nothing, so it helps a lot! That night we had dinner with the Woods. They are hilarious and they took us out to the Perkins, he is a really funny dude. That night I worked on contacting more people. To be honest, a lot of the missionary work recently, has been keeping the ward accountable and contacting them frequently. We have also been trying to get in the door with inactive members.
Friday We also went to "Feed My Starving Children" and that was super fun! We got a lot of boxes done in our time. We got 50 boxes and the next closest was 41 boxes. After "Feed My Starving Children", we went over and taught a family that has known about the Church, but is just now taking the lessons, and seem interested. After, teaching that family, we packed our bags, ate dinner, and drove up to another missionary's apartment. We stayed over, because we had breakfast with the Stake President the next morning. So we had a hype sleepover! It was really nice to have one of those, as we don't get that opportunity much here in the Anoka Stake. In Duluth, we got to do that once a week, so it brought back good memories.
On Saturday, we had a Zone breakfast with the Stake President, which was good. Basically he had family that is on a mission, and they talked about how they loved the Stake President because they have a monthly breakfast. So he was like, "imma" do that! We talked about the success in our area, but honestly I didn't enjoy it much, because the missionaries low key were just bragging about the success. After our Breakfast we had our weekly planning which is always kinda slow boring stuff. We had dinner at a Mexican Restaurant called Teresa's with a member family. After our really tasty dinner, we drove up to African Family Night! Every month the Anoka Stake African members gather and go to the church, and we get to invite the African people that we teach. So we brought William, and he got to connect with some members that were also from Kenya! It was actually a very spiritual Family Night, usually they are a lot more fun. I found it as a tender mercy because William is much more of a spirit driven person, rather than social, so it was like it was meant for him.
Sunday was a great day! We had the best talk and Priesthood lesson I have ever had in this area on Sunday. For Priesthood our teacher had a "panel" of people in the front, and asked them a bunch of questions. He had 4 very different people come up, and had them all share there unique ideas and thoughts on each question. It got a lot of participation, and I feel like it's a great way to get to know people better! I would really suggest doing something similar for one of your lessons sometime! After church we helped someone move out, and we had a really cool missionary moment with it. The member we were helping out, had his girlfriend come and help and she is very skeptical of religion. She ended up asking questions to us, and after a lengthy discussion we testified that she would only find the truth after an act of faith. It really seemed like she thought about it a lot. They tried paying us, but we declined, and they ended up forcing us to take the money, so we snuck it in their car and left. I hate taking money, because then it's not service it's just manual labor. I'll take food any day though 🤤🤤. We were able to drive down to the YSA Institute of Religion in Minneapolis to get a car for the Zone Leaders, and we went in to get the key, and a man that the YSA Elders are teaching right now (Elder Coombs, my trainer is one of them) bore his testimony to us! He is a very spiritual man, and it was awesome. I wish people were more open to talking about testimony and religion more often.
