Blown About By Every Wind of Doctrine. Minus the Doctrine Part.

Bonjour, tout les monde!

This week was fun, fun, fun until daddy took the T-bird away!

The week started out with an exchange, which ended up being the funniest part of the week. So, Elder Geddes went up to be with the Zone Leaders, and Elder Drubay (Only out six weeks longer than me) came down. I ended up  being in charge of the area. The funny thing is, I  happen to be severely geographically challenged. I had to use the GPS for everything. It was also very food for me because it helped me learn the area better. I might actually have the ability to do a decent navigation job in the area now. Of course, I feel safer not testing that theory. 

Sorry, I am way distracted right now. My mind keeps going off on tangents, which I generally regard with a floccinaucinihilipilification. Sorry. I love that word. It's funny.

I apologize for that whole last part. See? Tangents. Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes. Exchanges. The most exciting part of the exchange was the weather. It was pounding rain the whole time, and it was extremely windy. And when I say windy, I don't mean whoopee cushion windy, I mean big bad wolf kind of windy. I mean, there were branches, occasional garbage cans, sticks, children, adults, and large woodland animals flying all over the place. Okay, you got me. There are no garbage cans in Washington.

Anyway, power was going out everywhere, because trees were toppling (like the great and spacious building) and hitting power lines. The best part was when Elder Drubay and I were driving to a member's house for dinner. However, the road we had to take was closed because there was a tree across the road. It was hanging from the power lines,  so the end of it was above the road. (It's hard to describe. It was like a lean-to. Only the leaning part was a huge pine tree, and it covered most of the road. And it was only  being held up by some power lines, which had been stretched all the way across the road.)

There was another way to go around and get there, but it would have taken a long time, and wasted a lot of miles. Of course, I wanted to save miles by not going around. So we may have... um... driven under the tree, even though the road was closed. I can neither confirm nor deny that we drove under the tree. However, we got in to the area somehow, which is amazing because once we were in there, it turned out the road from the other direction had had  a tree fall across it, too. So, technically, there was no way we should have been able to get in. But somehow, it happened. Anyway, the members were way surprised to see us. They thought for sure that we wouldn't be able to make it. And all of there power was out. And the wife was mad because she was supposed to have had a refrigerator shipped to her that day, and it hadn't come because supposedly the road was closed, but somehow the elders had gotten to her house, so why wasn't her refrigerator there, and she was quite pithy (forcefully expressive), and she called the delivery company, and so on and so forth. Ahem. Anyway, dinner that night was: PB&J sandwiches. Which is totally understandable. I felt bad. We then proceeded to knock the area, which was way boony for two hours, even though it was dark and we had no flashlight, and all the power was out. Oh boy. It was way fun. I call it "blind knocking." 
People kept telling us that they couldn't hear our message because the power was out. I should have told them that we could bring them the light of Christ, I guess. Anyway, it was quite fun. The rest of this week has been less eventful. In fact, we have had little success in missionary work, but we are getting the ball rolling in this area. Jia told us that she was going to wait to learn about the church with her husband, who was coming home in a couple weeks. Apparently, they are both searching for truth, so that is WAY awesome.

Finally, I would like to share a little insight I gained from reading in Helaman and 3 Nephi this week. We need to be truly converted to the Lord. Our faith must be steadfast, and immovable. We cannot repent one time and think that we're good. Enduring to the end is a process and a pattern. We have to go back through those first steps of faith, repentance, keeping covenants and following the Spirit. I know that I've talked about this before, but it's important. We must be humble, and we must continually repent in order to progress. Humility and repentance go hand in hand. If you have one without the other then you need to rethink it. I wish I could express how important this is. We must be humble, and we must repent, or else we are literally damning our own progression! Anyway, I know that this church is true. That knowledge can be gained by any earnest seeker of truth, and that is a promise. This I say, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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Elder Benge