Birthdays And Dog Bites

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes!! 

This week flew by! What's so great about living in Idaho where there's a bunch of Mormons is they all celebrate the 24th of July! so I got to bounce around from ward party to ward party and it was awesome. there was tons of people to contact! one ward had a cobbler cook off and they surprised me with a birthday cake! they all sang for me and everything! It was nice to feel like I had family here with me. 

On the 26th we were out making our rounds and I was shimmying through some dusty cars not wanting to get gross stuff on my shirt and out comes this dog from the bushes and latches on to my ankle! I Freaked out and kicked it off me and was about to throw hands with this pooch but then a guy came staggering out of a tiny little trailer clearly intoxicated. He thought we were the guys from men in black and asked what all the yelling was for. I told him his dog bit me, he started crying and was like "I want you to pray to God and pray that his mouth will be shut forever." honestly had no idea how to respond to it so I just changed the subject.. this man had scoliosis and had a huge beard and told us his whole life story. please note he was shirtless and stinky and had his arms wrapped around us for support as he was talking to us. We finally escaped his clutches but we're going to be going back to teach him and his daughter. I'm saying this now, if that dog comes after me again I'm fightin!

Because were on the topic of fighting me and my comp got into a pretty big one yesterday and it was a really good learning experience for me. 

We were out contacting and there was a guy that was LDS a little bit ago but went inactive because of a nasty divorce and because a lot of members were mean to him afterwards.. He feels like everyone is against him. He has 2 kids he wants to raise in the church but he doesn't feel comfortable going because people can be judgemental.

We found him working in his garden (It was coming to the close of the night and I felt like we needed to go say hey and see how he was doing.) We had a little bit of a casual talk and then he started going, he told us his concerns, the things he's been through, why he doesnt want to come but is dying to come, how much he loves his kids, how he needs a friend. 

about 30-40 minutes later he stops and we schedule a return appointment for us to come back. 

As we were leaving I told Elder Garrow "wow, that was really neat that he opened up to us"

He responded with "you talk way too much, do you realize how many other people we could've talked to in that amount of time"

I usually let comments that annoy me slide but this lit me up! I told him that theres no way we could've had that conversation with this guy if we were in and out in 2 minutes. 

We got to talking some more and this is what I learned:

In a relationship or companionship when youre in a fight it's not 

(YOU + Problem) vs (Other Person) or (YOU) vs (Other Person + Problem)

What it really is is:

(YOU + Other Person) vs (Problem)

no matter how much you think you're right the other person has issues with what you're doing and so you both have to work together to find middle ground. 

For me I'm going to work on being time conscious and he is going to work on being more personable with people. this will be a growing experience for both of us.

Whats really cool is after we got done "fighting" there was a total sense of peace and there was a calmness. I would still be irritated with him if I ignored the comment he made. What I admire about Elder Garrow is when I did blow up on him he responded in a super calm matter and made it a discussion as opposed to a real big fight. Not gonna lie I was ready to just let him have it but in the end it is soooo much better to talk things out with those that you're around. Im thankful for these lessons I'm learning out here!

I love you all!! 

I didn't take a ton of pictures this week I'm sorry!

1. Birthday cake :)   (shoutout perry and 3rd ward)

2. Birthday berry pie (shoutout sister Cole) also there's a baby pie in the back

3. On the way to a service project (we were on exchanges)