ONE STEP AT A TIME

View from apartment 

Another week in the books.  Yesterday I started feeling a little sick and now today I got a cold.  I say that just in case I word things in a weird way or if I dont connect some of my ideas. haha just cause when I get a cold it usually fogs up my brain a bit.  You should ask Elder C, I have already said some ridiculous things.

Anyways, this was just about as normal a week as you get.   We got out and tried to do some slack line contacting cause it was finally warm enough.  I dont know if you remember but in my first two transfers I did some slack line contacting with elder S.  Elder S trained elder C and introduced it to him.  He liked it so much he got his own, and now we are doing it again.  If you dont remember, it's basically tight rope walking.  You tie it to two trees in a park and try to walk as far as you

Slack Lining

can.  It's kinda difficult.  While one of us are walking the other stands by and usually people will stop to watch or ask if they can try.  So while one is walking the other one will just talk to people.  Some pretty cool conversations come out of it.  It is also nice to get out of normal church clothes and into something a little more comfy haha  So we are going to be doing more of that in the future.

Also English started this week.  My class is all right.  I have like 7 men from the ages like 30-60.  They are all funny so its not a bad class at all.  I just wish some females would come, because personally I think it is easier to talk to them.... haha :)  We want to build our English classes. The mission is starting to change a lot of the ways I am used to doing things.  Like they are testing new ways to do English and what not.  But for now I am kinda sticking with my system cause I know it works and it actually works well, I'm open, just waiting for clearer directions. 

This week we were able to meet with some active and less active members.  Our meetings are actually really different then I am used to.  In my opinion it is a cool way to do it.  We set up a time to meet and then we talk.  We see how they are doing and it is kinda casual.  We talk about real life and joke around with them for a bit.  We leave them with a scripture, if we can, but that doesn't always happen. I think this is a good way to do it cause it doesnt feel as forced. This way of doing it helps us get on a more personal level with them and when we say things they know we are saying it because we care or just cause we want to and not because we feel like we must because we are missionaries.  It's nice.

So this week I gave another talk in church.  It was on repentance.  I maybe should have put a little more thought into it but there's only so much time to prepare, so I used parts of a talk I used my 3rd transfer... but it was fine haha  It's weird thinking about coming home and literally having way more than 100 people at church listening to me talk.  There is no way I can prepare for that!  Like I have gotten okay with speaking in front of people a little bit out here, but that might be because the most I had to talk in front of was like 20 people.  Ah freaks me out! haha.  Basically the point I tried to get across in my talk was why we keep trying and why we keep repenting.  That we do those things because we have the hope.  We also do those things to receive a certain type of hope.  We continually are striving to be better cause by being better we have a hope that some day we will be able to live together with our families, Heavenly Father, and Christ in never ending happiness forever.  I thought it was cool how Hope and repentance tie together. 

So that is everything for this week!  I love you all so much!  You are amazing and I dont know what Id do without you!!

Elder Dogar (aka Elder Cooper)