Elder Davis in Ohio

Hey, everyone! So this week has been pretty awesome, to be honest. Well, it's sort of been a whirlwind of emotions and stuff, but it's been good. overall, it's been one of the best weeks of my mission. OK, so the reason for the subject line is the main reason this week was awesome. We got to go to the temple. We'll be able to go this week, too, but for a different purpose. To explain, like I said in my last email, we had been asked to help move some furniture in the temple, with the understanding that because of the dangers regarding COVID-19, the areas in which we receive ordinances in the temple needed to be re-staged. But what I didn't realize was that it wasn't just about moving furniture: The temple is being remodeled very soon, and it's only opening up for a short, three-week period so people can receive the initiatory ordinance and the endowment live for themselves (some of the people who will be doing that for the first time, by the...

Hey, everyone! So this week has been all right. There's actually been a lot of great stuff that's happened. I'll try to remember it all and cram it all in. So we've been able to have training visits this week, and that's been really great. We've got 3 or 4 scheduled for every single week the rest of this transfer, with the exception of transfer week (I think), which should give us time to meet with every single companionship, and the three district leader companionships twice. We just want to give everyone a little bit more variety. There are a lot of restrictions involved in our training visits, like we have to meet separately and can't be together--once we exchange, we have to be apart from each other, and it's preferable that we're at our church building for the exchange, and the exchanges only last for 5 to 6 hours. We can be at an apartment if we have to, though. So what we usually do is send one companionship to the institute an...

Hey, everyone. The quote this week is from Anton Ego in  Ratatouille . It came to mind a few days ago. My brain is feeling a tiny bit broken today, so even though I know there was a reason for it, I'm not sure what it is. I guess I'll find it along the way as I write this email. This week has been pretty good. There was a mid-cycle transfer, so there were a couple missionaries who came in and a few who got new companions. Our zone now has 15 missionary companionships, so that's pretty crazy. We also found out recently that sisters are able to do these brief, 5- to 6-hour training visits where they meet at the church and do studies and other things (staying in separate rooms on opposite sides of the church) and then switch back, but it was only sisters for a while there, and then a few days ago we learned that elders were now allowed to do it with the zone leaders, so Elder Timothy put together a training visit schedule, and we started meeting with the elders ...

Hey, everyone! This week's quote is from Benedict Cumberbatch's character (I don't remember his name) in "Amazing Grace." He tells his friend William Wilberfforce (played by Ioan Gruffudd) that he's going to become prime minister, and soon. William objects, saying no one has ever done it before, to which he responds with this line. So this week we met our new mission president, and he's quite a bit younger than most mission presidents usually are. His name is President Horgesheimer, and he and his wife are from Utah. They've already decided to do a few things that were pretty crazy. For instance, within the first week of their arrival they met with every single missionary for a personal interview (that's 180-190 missionaries in four days). Elder Timothy and I were among the first to meet with them, and they took a picture of us and had us write a letter to President and Sister Stratford and paste the letter and the picture in a scrapbo...

Hey, everyone. The quote this week is from Mr. Escalante (I don't know the actor's name) in  Stand and Deliver . I chose it primarily because I learned something about my new companion that I did not realize when I saw him on the transfer board: He's a Spanish-speaking missionary! He was originally assigned to do Spanish work, but he's been transferred here to The Ohio State University. So now we do language studies every day (or we will do it every day when things actually settle down--it's been crazy, but I'll talk more about that in a bit). So now all I need is a desire to learn Spanish! Or something. So this short week has been really good but really crazy. So let's start with transfers. We had two new sets of missionaries coming in. Elder Carter and Elder Abney were being assigned to Spanish work, and then Elder Ciminski was going with Elder Hoffman to another apartment. So transfer day there was hardly any time to do anything--they were reope...