Great Week!

 Hey family!

So yeah this week has gone by so quickly. President Jones and his family are leaving on Thursday so that is terrible sad.. I really have gotten so close to him even though it has only been like 6 months and I have probably only talked to him a handful of times. He is such a great man. Can't wait to see him up speaking in general conference in a couple of years! It'll be great!

The meeting yesterday was awesome. I sat next to our Ward mission leader and I could see him taking notes just as quick as he could. We really clicked just right off the bat. It was so awesome. I am grateful to have such a supportive council now. It makes you appreciate things in life so much more when you don't have them. When you get things it is so much sweeter. It was interesting to hear about facebook and internet as missionaries. I don't really know how I feel about that yet. I know that is going to be awesome because that is what the Lord wants us to do but it is not at all what the mission experience has been thought of for years! I really loved the quote from Elder Nelson when he said "Love is the lubricant and life of missionary work." It was sad to hear about his family and how there was no one that could teach them. How devasted that must have been to the bishop and to the him. I cannot even imagine. Wherever I am I hope that the bishop can always count on me to do what needs to be done.

So I guess I will start back at the beginning of the week. We had our Pday and we went to action bikes and I got some new road tires which are SO nice to have because we bike anywhere from 20 to 25 miles a day. Yeah... We work really hard. It is crazy hot and humid. At the end of the day I can like wring out my garments and shirt because of the sweat. It is disgusting but hey! It's pretty neat to! So we also went and played some B ball at the church with our DL and his companion. It was tireing but it was pretty great to. I also bought a ton of healthy food to eat for the week and then just ended up putting all of it on pizzas and stuff that we got from a member last week. So I guess it kinda canceled everything out. We just basically knocked doors that night and haven't really found anyone to teach. Oh and we went to visit the stake patriarch to get some water and he and I get along really well we talked alot and he told us some great stories. He also gave us a great recipe for making laundry detergent. It is super cheap and so yeah.. It has like Borax or something in it. It was great. I think in Fredericksburg it taught me how to get referrals from the members because when I got here they hadn't gotten one in 6 months and we got 4 this past week with another 3 in the works. The Lord teaches us and prepares us for the future.

So the Tuesday rolled around and we were back on the horse. We went and taught this one lady that we have been teaching for a while and invited her to pray and read. She didn't make it to church Sunday because she had to drive her friend around who got surgery. It sounds like a great and noble cause, except her friend got surgery to just enlarge her figure. Yeah. Not a good excuse to miss church. But you hear everything out here. We also had dinner with a family that is from Logan, they are going back later in the summer so they were laughing that they were going to stop by and stuff and I told them they could stay rent free and eat all our food because that would basically be replacing what I did. They might have to report back some sportscenter to me though. Oh sidenote. The spurs. That was sad I guess. We almost won it, we here alot down here about it and everybody was so excited. At our apartment complex they had a big pool watching party for game 7 and so we went back the next morning all the chairs were thrown all over and it looked like a disaster so we figured that they must have lost. To bad...

Wednesday was pretty cool. We went to Zone meeting which was 3 hours long. It was alright except they put us in these groups and had us say the first vision. Like every 4th word or something going around a group. I was awful. Probably the worst out of everybody. I can say it word perfect by myself but yeah. That made me look dumb but it was whatever. I'll never teach a lesson like that anyway haha. We also went to Breakfast with Brother Tiemann to a little hole in the wall place. So when we go to places like that I basically just get whatever the member gets because that way it's like a safe zone with respect or whatever. So I heard him say Hueveos' Rancheros and immediatley out of my mouth came "Make that two!" Ugh. So I had to down like 3 eggs that morning. It was decent. I mean I didn't dry heave or anything. I think that I am about to break through on those. It's one of those things I am working on. Another Sidenote. I accidently bought fat free milk on P Day. That stuff is awful. So I have been eating "raw" raisen bran all week. It was a good day though.

Thursday was different. We got up and did our weekly planning and as we almost finished Elder Hughes got up and upchucked. So we had to stay in and study. I gave him a nyquil pill and he slept from 2 oclock that afternoon to like 8 oclock the next morning. It was different so I read alot of the Book of Mormon and studied that for like 3 hours then I picked up Jesus the Christ. I had started it once and it blew my mind with all the big words, but I started again and this time it was so different! I love, love, love it. I read a ton of it that day and right now I am a quarter of the way through it! It is so crazy!! I would invite like everyone to read it. It totally has to be read with the spirit but it explains the life of Christ so simply that you can't misunderstand what happened to him. I love it.

Friday was similar. He was sick so I read Jesus the Christ some more and now I am through page 210 It is incredible!! I also took a break and named all of my ties. I know that is weird but it kept me entertained for an hour or so. We get along really well, Elder Hughes and I so it was fun to kinday just talk for a while. Oh and also so that night Brother Tiemann wanted to take us out again to get some BBQ at Rudy's. That is probably the best place in Texas to get it. Man is it good. So when we went up to order he didn't know that Elder Hughes wasn't feeling well so he ordered a ton of stuff for us three. But he had already eaten, so it was basically like a feast for me. I ate and ate and ate. I had proabably like 2 pounds of just straight up meat. It was a dream come true. So then since we hadn't been out of the apartment, he took us for a ride to the Air Force Base. He pulled up to the gate and the soldier saluted him and told him to have a good one Major. We were like OH man! This guy is like up there! So he went and showed us a ton of stuff about the base and a bunch of cool stories from his day's in the Air force. He knew like all of the people that used to be in charge and it was neat. He also drove us around to a Buddhist temple. We were circling it and then we saw a Buddhist Monk! like a real one! It was so cool! He was even drinking a Pepsi! So Brother Tiemann just being the great guy that he is jumped out and tried to get us a tour of it. But the monk didn't speak much english and told us to come back on Sunday. It was soooo funny.

Saturday was a hard day of work being cooped up all day and then going out to ride is hard. We bike to Schertz which is like an hour trip because we have to cross a river bottem and then walk along side of the road for like a half hour before we really can bike again. So that is always a trip. We biked like 26 miles again. We taught one first lesson to a lady from Vietnam but it was kinda sad because after we taught her she told us she couldn't read vietnamese or english and that she really had no idea what we were saying anyway. That kinda was a downer but it was still great to share! We knocked a few more streets and didn't really find anything. People here are like nicer, but overall they want to listen less. If that makes sense at all. So it's nice to not have people constantly battling us but I did enjoy battling through satan's ideas everyday. Now just they shut the door or kill us with kindness, by saying they respect what we do but they are not interested.

Sunday is a fantastic day to be here. I really love it. Ward council is awesome. They all think that I am super funny and so that just got us off on a good note. We were telling them that we went to see a member that was inactive and the guy that answered was just getting back from officiating a funeral told us that the member had moved away to live with his boyfriend. So we told Ward council this but I said "Yeah the Priest that lived there told us that the guy had moved away to live with his Boyfriend." Everyone about died laughing. Hahahaha woops. but it was funny. Ward Council is great!! In Sacrament we had a lady talk for 10 minutes about how she found a baby bird and that had fallen out of the nest and she wanted to nurture it back to life. She told this story throughout her whole talk the as she was comparing it to the atonement told us that yesterday while feeding the bird she had overfed it and choked it to death. Since she didn't know how to do the Hiemlich on a bird she had to let it die. But she would be forgivin for it. It was interesting. So then the High councilor speaker got up and starting talking about important women in his life and then he talked about how his wife joined the church when she was 17 after meeting the missionaires one day and that she just loved them and then he told us that he met his wife because he was one of the missionary's!! So of course we are sitting with some members and they all turn to me and are like "Elder Funk! Don't you get any ideas now!" hahaha it was great. But seriously the church has great speakers everywhere.

Well that basically sums up my week. Having a ton of fun, have to find some new investigators. I now know how not to feed a baby bird and I love the gospel!

Remember who you are and what He stands for!

Elder Paul Robert Funk