The good news: Steve and Andie both came to church again yesterday. Steve even participated a little bit in gospel principles class and I think the things we are teaching him are starting to stick which is good because previously it felt like everything we tried to teach him just went over his head. Also his doctor told him that he needs to stay off of alcohol and marijuana for I think 6 months. We now know that Steve has been smoking weed. Nice. At least he'll be off of it for a while so hopefully he'll be able to feel the spirit easier. We are probably going to start teaching him at the church building because the spirit will be there easier than his house. Especially because of the fat stacks of Playboy magazines he has in his house. And it means that Steve will wear a shirt because the last 2 times we've been over he has just been in his basketball shorts. For reference, Steve is like 6'3 and 300 lbs. Yeah... The other good news: We had another lesson with Andie on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and at the end we asked her if she believed that the gospel will make her happy and she said yes. Then we asked her if she would be baptized by someone with the proper authority and she said yes. So there you have it folks. This will be my first baptism. It won't be for a while because there are some commandments to be lived so we don't have a date yet but it's gonna happen.
In other news we had zone training meeting in Joplin on Friday. President Shumway was there to address the shrinking of the mission in the coming months. He gave us some things to inspire us and get us motivated to keep working hard and to "hasten our hearts" so that we can be better missionaries. I also lost one of my nametags somewhere around that time. We did not get iPads.
We saw Richard Long again. He was at the thrift shop we volunteer at and invited us over. So we went over. Unfortunately, he did not play the piano for us again, but we heard him playing when we knocked on his door so he somewhat played for us. The whole time he talked about how he is like a famous preacher or something, and how like one time he got up to speak and I quote: "The spirit got real heavy on me" and then he told us that he talked for like an hour or something like that. We quote him all the time. He said that people keep asking him to come out to their churches and preach to them but he can't because he's like booked for a year but then the only thing on his calendar was the appointment we set up with him for tomorrow. I personally think he's delusional. Then he told us that he was like halfway through the Book of Mormon and we asked him where he was at and he opened up to like Ether so I don't think he's actually been reading it.
We saw Tom Mitchell again this week. It was a grand ol' time. There's a table in our meetinghouse that has all these way old church videos on VCR and they are up for grabs because the church doesn't want or need them. Since Tom has a VCR player we decided to grab a ton of them and every time we visit with him we'll just give him another movie and watch it with him because he's not progressing. So we watched Ensign to the Nations with him and basically, if you haven't seen it, it's about how the church has grown incredibly throughout the world. Everybody in it testifies of the truthfulness of the work and the church and everything, so I was wondering what Tom would say about that. First thing that comes out of his mouth when it was over was: Man, I didn't know there was Mormons in Africa! It was pretty funny. Elder Colley kept falling asleep during the movie and the only reason I stayed awake during the movie (it was 60 minutes long ok) was because I was laughing at Elder Colley falling asleep. Then when Tom was trying to get the VCR out Elder Colley and I both started laughing really hard for no reason, behind Tom's back. It was really hard to not just burst out laughing. We poorly disguised our laughing with coughing. I almost peed my pants. In fact laughing has been a constant struggle as of late. Elder Colley and I have a lot of inside jokes and when one of us cracks one in the middle of an appointment it is difficult to keep our composure. We have had trouble at Richard Long's, at Tom's and also at Steve's. It didn't help that Steve didn't have a shirt on.
That is about it for last week. I turned 19 on Saturday, that was pretty cool I guess. Brother Fowler took us to Burger King twice. He thinks that I am going to become the president of the United States. He also says that he is going to use his family ties at BYU to get me in so we'll see if that happens. He is such a character. We're going over to his house tonight to watch Ohio State vs. Oregon. It'll be great. Just kidding. Due to the several people who expressed concern about me starving, I must let you all know that there is plenty of food in my apartment and the members feed us quite regularly. I was exaggerating for the sake of humor in my last email. The only reason I don't have any money this month is because I stocked up on necessities that aren't edible. But I have also bought food, so it's all good in the hood.
Peace, Love and Star Wars
Elder Naegle
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