Transfers are here!

Man these transfers just keep getting faster and faster! Tomorrow night we will find out for sure who's staying and who's going and then Thursday will be our actual transfer day. We are hoping we both stay together (as always haha), we are thinking that we probably will since we both just came into the area, but that didn't stop me from leaving last time haha. So who knows! This week has been a good one though. Tuesday I went on an exchange to the Spanish Elders in our district's area for the day and man was that hard! I could hardly understand anything anyone said! We taught 4 lessons that day and all 4 were completely in Spanish! I could speak all I needed to just fine, but being able to understand what they were saying was hopeless haha. So basically I just sat there with a prayer in my heart for my companion, nodding when they nodded or laughing when they laughed haha that seemed to work out great until the people we were talking to would turn to me and ask me a question, then I would just have to look to Elder Wilson (my temporary companion for the exchange) with a look of panic and distress and he would translate for me haha. It was a lot of fun though! Spanish people are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. It's funny how they look around to find people to teach though. Instead of just knocking on every door like we do, they go around and kind of stereotype each of the apartments or houses to whether or not it looks like Hispanics live there haha. Elder Wilson told me that two of the things that they usually look for is first and foremost any sort of statues or things in the yard that would determine that they are Catholic (99% of the people they talk to are Catholic) and then secondly, they look to see if all of the stuff someone would normally put inside their house is currently on the outside of their house haha, things like couches, tables, chairs, TVs, kids stuff, fridges, etc. He says from what they've seen so far it's been pretty fool proof haha. So that was quite the interesting day spending some time in the life of a Spanish missionary! Another highlight to our week though was, once again, Church yesterday! We had President and Sister Riggs come and speak in our Sacrament meeting and man were their talks awesome! Sister Riggs spoke to the youth about preparing when they are young to be righteous adults when they grow up and read a lot of stuff from the scriptures, it was really good. Then President, of course, talked about how to do missionary work! He emphasized how the desire of our hearts is really what decides what will happen and how if we desire to share the Gospel then we will be blessed with the opportunities and means to do so. He shared a really funny story from his football days though haha. He said he was playing as a quarterback in high school and during their practice that day they were working on being able to call and run audibles. An audible real quick for those who might not know football so well, is when the quarterback gets up to the line of scrimmage and looks at how the defense is lined up and can just tell that whatever play they've got planned just isn't going to work, so he says some sort of key word and they change their play right then and there to whatever play is associated with the word he says. Well what they were practicing is whenever they would get up to the line and he would call out any color they would switch to a play they called a "smash" then he would follow the color with a number, if the number was odd the play would go right, if the number was even the play would go left, well for whatever reason his team just couldn't get it down haha. So they would practice and practice this over and over and just couldn't get it right, which was making their coach really frustrated so the coach calls them in to try talking some sense into them and he said "if you (insert offensive word here)s don't get this right this time around you're all running 10 100's" which meant running the whole field 10 times. Well President Riggs really had the easy part of the play, he just had to call out the color and numbers, so he being kind of a smart-alek at the time asked his coach "So coach no matter what color I call we are running a smash right?" his coach said that was right, then he asked "So no matter what number I call, if it's even we go left and if it's odd we go right?" His coach told him he was correct. So they re-line up and as soon as they get on the line President Riggs starts calling it out "AquaMarine! Eleventy million nine hundred and seventy five.....!" and by the time he had gotten to that point his coach had already thrown his clip board on the ground and was shouting for everyone to line up for their 100 yard dashes. Well President thought it was really funny at the time but the rest of his team didn't, so as he was laughing and running is 100's the rest of the team was giving him all sorts of mean looks. Well they get back into the locker-room afterwards and the biggest guy on the team gets President Riggs pinned up against a locker and he doesn't look to happy, and he just looks at President and says "Riggs, why are you so dang happy all the time?" Well that wasn't really what he was expecting to hear haha but he said he just opened up his mouth and put came the words "Because I know why I'm here, where I'm going, and where I've come from." As soon as he had said that both he and this beasty football player just looked at eachother with confused looks on both of their faces for a few seconds, then the football player let Riggs down and asked "Riggs, you walking home today?" he said that he was and the guy responded "Alright I'm walking with you, you've got to tell me what you mean by that." And he did! Throughout the walk home President was able to explain to this guy all about why we are here in this life, where we are going after we die, and where we were before we were here. The guy really understood it and if I remember right I believe he joined the church with his family some time down the road. So the point of this story that President wanted to emphasize was that just because he had the desire to share the Gospel with others he, when placed in a panicky situation, was able to have the words placed in his mouth of what was needed to be said to the person asking him and as long as we have that desire too that we will always have to words we need to say given to us. It was a really awesome talk all around. Man I didn't realize how long that story was though haha sorry that took up so much room! But overall this week really was a good one! Hopefully my next email will be from here in Centreville still! I hope everyone is haveing a great week wherever you are! I love and miss you guys lots!