Hell Week

Not every week can be your best week I suppose and this one probably ranks real close to the bottom to be honest. Now I realize that I'm not the most positive person in the world or anything, but I guess this one was just worse or something.

P day went off without a hitch we had some fun and we taught 3 lessons on Monday so that we didn't have time to go to FHE which is kinda a blessing. It's always awkward anyway...

Then Tuesday was probably one of the worst days on of my mission. We had a long afternoon then when night came we had a lesson with Meg and she was just getting off work. We had two members coming with us to the lesson and the Brother Ellis was late and so we had to go sit outside the apartment complex on the picnic table and have the first part of the lesson. 

We chit chatted for a second and then started to follow up on commitments and she told us that she had smoked and drank a glass of wine. Citing that Jesus would be fine with that because he drank wine. I literally haven't said anything at this point. Then Elder Steggell read 1 Nephi 3:7 and started to teach her the doctrine of being able to keep all the commandments. I asked her why she might think God would have us stay away from everything and she said, "Because when I drink and smoke I can feel it tear down at the spirit." Boom Golden. She totally understands. Then Brother Ellis called and asked where we were and I told him that we were out back so he came over and sat down. Then ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE. Meg looked at me and said "I'm so sick you and your cocky attitude. You always think you are so much better and you F***** aren't. Your problem is that you just need to realize you're an idiot. That's the other thing with you Mormons is that you don't accept anyone else's ideas.You Elder Funk are just so arrogant all the time and think you know everything" We just all sat there stunned and I was fuming. I was so livid. Then Brother Ellis jumped in and tried to calm the fire, then she let me have it again. I just sat there so upset. Then Elder Steggell asked her when we could meet again. She then glared at me and said Next Monday would be fine. She grabbed her purse looked at me and said "you are so F'ing Immature" then stormed off. 

I was pretty ticked off, we went to another lesson after saying by to the members and I just was so ticked off. 

Brother Ellis is one of my best friends in the ward and so he called us and asked to come to the next lesson with us and then took me and got me ice cream afterwords at baskin Robins. He probably saved my life that day.

It destroyed my week. I really just got so depressed. It is so hard to have someone you put so much love and time into, completely destroy everything that you try and do for them. I cannot imagine how parents feel, but I figure that I got a little taste of it. It was so hard. I really honestly am not good at alot of different aspects of missionary work, but I thought that loving people was something I was getting the hang of and it was shot down. It was so hard. I just found it super hard to get motivated to get out the door. I know this probably sounds stupid, but it really is just my life. 

Then I was sitting in Sacrament meeting and we were singing the sacrament hymn and it hit me so hard once again that Jesus Christ really did already feel that. He felt how hurt I was, how much of a failure that I felt like. I know for sure that he paid the price. However I really don't think I wanted or desired to feel better. Sometimes it seems to almost feel good to feel bad. When I came home I was still just so sad, I hadn't talked all day long and Elder Snow grabbed me and talked to me for awhile. I really owe that kid so much. He helped me out immensely yesterday. I am so grateful when you need someone, to have someone. It is such a blessing. 

It really was just a terrible week. 

Then yesterday we got invited over for dinner at a member's house and they invited the sister's too. Yep that was weird. Luckily the sisters are the bomb and dinner was super fun. It's weird being around Single adults. It's like everyone just flirts all the time and stuff. But doesn't really want to date. Weird. Oh and they gave the dinner thought and it was like I was a member... They even left us with an invitation. 

Oh I got called out on being sarcastic twice this week with members. Gosh Dang. 

hmm.. Elder Steggell and I are staying here another transfer at least together so that means I will be here til at least when Ry leaves on his mission. I only have 4 transfers left which is nuts!

Hmm.. P day is going to be good. Staker is making me lunch today, and playing some basketball. It's gonna be dope. Oh and Elder Snow is taking me to dinner. Seriously when you are there for people in their time of need they flock to you when you need it! I love having cool friends. They are the best. This week I am going to be try and help another. I have a quote I see everyday that says "In all reality everyone is hurting on the inside, some people are just better at hiding it then others." It never hurt to do a nice thing for someone. Really. 

Well I guess that's about it. Love ya lots!

Remember who you are and what He stands for!

Elder Funk

#GoSpurs

Hello Family!
First of all I can't tell you how much people down here love their spurs. I'm so glad that they won. Hecka yeah.
So we went to Institute today and I met another guy that was off his mission in January. He said that he served in the Dallas mission so I asked him if by chance he knew an Elder Keller. Not only did he know him, but he trained Elder Keller. His name was Hyrum Quiroz or something and he is going to take me out to dinner saturday. I'm stoked. He said Jake taught him tons about Football and cattle. I'm sure Jake gets in every door just with that knowledge.

Hmm... Nothing super crazy really happened. We went on exchanges once or twice this week so that Elder Steggell could do some planning with his other Zone Leader companion (Sometimes I wonder why I exist) and so I got put with Elder Jensen again. He decided that he wanted to knock all day, so we knocked the richest houses that we could find in the middle of the day. It was so fun. I love just being able to talk. It makes it so awesome. to have a normal conversation with someone. I can just babble on and on and on about nothing for hours. By the way I totally love living with other missionaries. We have the most fun ever. I am like BFF's with them, we go through the thick of things together and solve the world's problem. Some aren't the greatest ideas but they will work. I'll tell you about them in 177 days.

I mananged to tick off one of our investigators, I may have told you about her telling us that "waiting for my boyfriend to take the missionary lessons and be willing to be baptized is a dumb thing to do but I just want to do it." Then I told her "Yep your right that is a dumb idea. You should get baptized if you know it's true." Apparently didn't go over quite like she wanted it to or something, I just agreed with her, but that's wrong I guess. Now her other missionaries in Indiana are teaching her over skype because we won't play ping pong and teach her the Law of Chastity like her other missionaries. Whatever.

President gave a training this week that was pretty cool. He talked about Faith and everything and how we are Finding by faith, but lack Faith in Finding. I'm pretty sure that man knows everything about everything and that he does actually know the truth of all things. It's pretty sweet.

I don't know if I told you about Mike or not. He got baptized friday and confirmed on Sunday. From the time that he was found, taught and baptized was 2 weeks. 14 days. It was so legit, he should be pretty solid for the church and in the church. Miracles really do happen it's nuts. He was found while a member was at a yogurt shop eating and wearing a BYU shirt and he came up and asked her if she was mormon. She invited him to us and bam. Baptized.

Man I'm still on the Spurs thing. I am so psyched that I never have to miss another Final's game again. NEVER. You never know how good you have it til you don't have it no more.
Basketball was pretty good last week. There is a sister in the mission that is like a totally tom boy and whips everyone out. She totally rocked my socks last week. Like tossed all 166 pounds of me.
Hmm.... I really don't know what else to say. We are doing well. I could keep writing just for the sake of having a longer email. Oh Elder Steggell just reminded me. He was making french toast this week and I was having a tortilla. When I tossed them in front of him and he recieved a revelation. French Tortillas. We dipped them in egg and then made the eggs and put them in the tacos with syrup on top. 4 of those is enough to kill a grown man. We felt so sick after, but they are really good.
On another food note. We went to Carl's Jr. Bacon Ranch fry's are not exactly what they are in the picture. I feel terrible right now.
Father's day is a fail in the Singles ward by the way. We had three talks about Eternal Marriage. I think that people have to start to realize that they need to flirt and date in order to get married. The bishop is trying to persuade them to do more of both of those. It's also how he is helping us fellowship our investigators. I love Bishop. I got to eat with him on Friday. It was the first time I have ever eaten with a Bishop on my mission! Crazy right? He talked about the Spurs the entire time. Everything takes a back seat to the spurs. EVERYTHING.

Well I guess that is about it. Love yall.
Remember who you are and what He stands for!
Elder Funk

Elder Funk (middle) at a baptism with his companion and the sisters. Both sets of missionaries had a baptism that day

Satan starts small....

I was kinda thinking about waiting til it was a quarter after one to start writing this, but that would be a waste of P day time just to make a Taylor Swift reference. All I wish is that I was knee deep in the water somewhere, with my toes in the sand, not a worry in the world and a cold drink in my hand. There ya go Zac Brown.
I guess I should just go ahead and start the email for real...

This week was really great. We went on exchanges for 3 days straight. It is so bizarre to pretty much only have a half of a companion for a transfer. It's a weird relationship.

I worked with and Elder named Elder Jensen, we worked his area one day and mine the next. We taught not a ton in his area but did get to play a game of Book of Mormon baseball where you flip to a random scripture and have to guess the Book chapter and Verse. I totally owned him. Completely satisfying.

Oh I have a guy in my Ward named Savon Moniz. He was the Quarterback for UNLV a year or two ago and is transferring somewhere else, He is so ripped. I am pushing really hard to get him to the promised land in Logan, but he already knows that Chuckie is there. I guess Chuckie is a senior or something? He is sweet though, he gave me a Lava lava. One of those skirts. The breeze never felt better.

We came into the apartment one night and saw a a little bug that was freaking out underneath the door jam. I "The Zone President" went to pull it out with my shoe and it was a snake. A snake. I cannot tell you how bad I freaked out. I jumped up on top of the table, screaming,  and "The assistant to the Zone President" Elder Snow started screaming and ran upstairs. . Elder "West Zone Choir Coordinator" Steggell was there singing his Hallelujahs too.Luckily for us we live with the "Work out Coordinator" Elder Vega He's a body builder so he took care of it for us and put it outside. It really wasn't very big at all, but that's how satan works too. Starts small. He starts small...

Another encounter I had with God's animal kingdom this week. We were doing service for some Pakistanians (No relevance to the story just a cool fact) and moving all of their stuff to another house. Towards the end of the move the main guy coped out and went to Mcdonalds while we got the heavy stuff. He brought me a strawberry shake and so I drank half of it and moved a couple of more things while talking to another dude about overcoming Heroine. When I came back to the shake I drank it and felt something hard hit my tooth. "Wow! Mcdonalds put real stawberries in my shake!" Til I crunched down and I swear I heard tiny screaming. I spit it out and it was a fly. He had crawled down my straw and I had sucked him back up. Got to be kidding me.
Our investigator Meg seems to be taking kinda the same fate as the fly. She is kinda crazy. She keeps calling the people we fellowshipped to get free stuff and is just crazy. She came to church yesterday because we had "A really Cute guy" (Her words) come pick her up. She was high when I went over to tell her she couldn't get baptized the next day, because for some reason she thought she still was and I basically did everything short of call down hell fire. I was pretty ticked because she kept doing weird things. I can't explain missionary work. What a miracle it is. I really don't want to go back to her to badly.

Amy is our other Asian investigator, she is pretty golden except she has a boyfriend that is Catholic. Boyfriends seem to cause so many problems. I am 100% convinced now that I never want to get a boyfriend. They are really just a pain in the neck. He wants her to convert over to Catholicism so she and he can go to church on Christmas or Easter. So she doesn't know what to do. She does believe absolutely everything that we teach her, but that would be really, really tough. I love that girl to death. She is great. We just got to help her realize that Life moves on after Boyfriends. It really really does.

The other big one that we have is Mike. He just texted me a second ago and asked if his baptism was on friday or saturday. He is so great. He is going to get baptized this weekend! After only 3 weeks of investigating. He has a testimony that is growing more and more and is just so great. We teach him everything and he sucks it all in. It's beautiful. I often think to myself "Wouldn't it be nice if we were older in the kind of world where we belong?" I think everyone would be like Mike and ready to get baptized.

I was really pondering this week and read all of the conference addresses to the women of the church that they give in general conference. So great by the way, totally should read those every time. Back to the point. One of them was talking about how much women beat themselves up and tend to look at all the things that they do wrong and yeah. Elder's spend time trying to uncover the way women think, I guess when God says that we may know the truth of all things though he may be saving this one for a really far off in the distance. The whole scattered point is with this that I realize how much when people choose to not do things it isn't because they are lazy or disobedient, generally,  it is because there is something deeper. There is one elder that we live with that has a ton of stuff going on in his life and sometimes he will not wear his tie when he studies or skip a few minutes of studies and walk over to the Dollar store with his companion and while we were on exchanges the companion I was with rebuked him. And sometimes, I have seen other missionaries see similar things and rebuke others. When really if they just got to know that person they would understand how much really someone is giving and not what they are lacking.

It's pretty much all perspective. I met a missionary this week that came home 6 months early from his mission, he went on to explain that he had to undergo chemo and felt so overwhelmed by it even though he had done it before. To me he was a great example of giving his all, even though he in some eyes didn't make it. He became a hero of mine.

That is a pretty obvious example of someone who did their best and didn't quite make it and it was ok. But I think of how everyone is just like that. It's so much easier to look on the things that they aren't doing and not see the things they are doing despite their shortcomings. It was a lesson I really learned this week. I just continue to learn so much I feel like. I really do love the mission. Am I counting down til the day that I get home? Why yes I am. Am I going to be excited when this is over? Yes I will be. Am I going to wear a suitcoat ever again? I certainly will do my best to make sure that never happens. I am really grateful that I have gotten to serve. I hope that everyone takes a tiny bit of time to do something nice for someone. That's all Jesus would want. Looking at other's perspectives is the quickest way to love!
Love yall lots.

Remember who you are and what He stands for!
Elder Funk

JUNE!

Well Hey family.
So Lets see... P day was so epic. I think I probably mentioned because we were emailing at the Miller's house and they loaded us up with Bacon and tons and tons of other food. It was seriously sooo good. I loved it. So great.

I don't know if yall heard about the Tornado that happened in Texas, but I just so happened to be on exchanges in the round about area of the tornado with another Zone Leader. We got a extreme tornado warning and stayed inside for cover. It was predicted to head right for us and have golf ball sized hail and everything, pretty nuts right? We made a decision to stay in for the night from about 6 to 9. It was nuts, the sky started to get darker and darker and then we realized that it was 9 o clock and time to go to bed. Yep. Tornado didn't even come close to us. It didn't even rain, the weather was beautiful. Just one of those perks for missionaries not having any contact with the world. We figured we were all going to die, and everyone that was still running around outside was in trouble too. Nope. Nothing at all.

We picked up a couple of sweet new investigators this week. Mike was a referral from Tessa this girl that is getting ready to go on a mission. He has tons and tons of questions about the gospel and has the sweetest intent in the world. I think we should be able to get him baptized in the upcoming month or two. It's gonna be great. We have been instructed that we are supposed to teach with the pamphlets, I don't know if you already got this rant or not, but we show them all the pictures and ask, "What do you see?" Sorta a spiritual interrogation of sorts. No one ever gets all the pictures right, but mike nailed them! It was pretty cool, he even explained priesthood to us and it was so great. Gonna get baptized.

Meg is kinda falling off of the deep end. She lost two jobs in basically two days. Just not showing up or something like that, I don't get it. Just show up and fake it or something. So she has been dealing with that and complaining to us a whole bunch. She is so close to getting baptized, she knows it is all true, she just isn't ready to commit yet.

We got another Investigator this week that has been taking the lessons since probably march or so in Indiana. The missionaries over there are either completely inspired or terrible. She said all the lessons that they have they go on walks. Because she asked them if they could wear normal clothes and they said they could only do it if they had something that required it. So they suggested going Hiking. Umm.. No. Bad idea, she wanted us to go hiking with her and we said no. She asked us if we ever just get to hang out with our investigators like they do over there, and we were like... No...? Luckily they were bold enough to teach her the Law of chastity. Oh how you might ask? Playing Ping pong. People tick me off sometimes. So we have her lesson and she says, "I know not getting baptized because my Boyfriend isn't interested is a dumb idea, and I should just do it.." I just told "Yes that is a stupid idea. And yes you should just do it." I really can't wait to get home and use my social skills. It is honestly kind of crazy to watch girls again do things just to get attention. I lose my mind.

For example. yesterday, we had a girl come up to us and start talking to us because she just got off of her mission a month ago, Flirting super hard core with us, we kept trying to retreat, but nothing seemed to work. Our Ward mission leader even came over stuck out his hand, she didn't see it, he shrugged and walked away. So funny. Then she came and sat with us and the Linger longer after church. Luckily Elder Steggell is super kind. When we got home I was still ranting about this girl to Elder Steggell, even Elder Steggell was like what the heck?? which is nuts because is the optimistic person in the world. I start telling the Elders we live with about her and they met her too! She went to their dinner appointment too and flirted with one of them super hard core and then rebuked the other and told him to cut his hair. Uh. P day is the next day crazy girl. We all just ranted about women for an hour before going to bed. Oh I do make sure to do Top 5 at 10:05. Kinda like sportscenter but missionary style. This week Highlighted a Devastingly disappointing tornado that never hit and a couple of missionary's picking up a message chair in a move. Miracles. Miracles.

Oh so at this linger longer, which makes church 4 hours instead of 3, we were eating and a girl had a seizure and passed out. A member at our table said that it happens all the time and that she just needs a minute to get up and going again. I think during that minute, 4 or 5 people called the ambulance and she was carted off in a stretcher. I felt really terrible for her.. That must be pretty hard.

At church though we had Mike and he was sitting by himself so I jumped up and sat with him and Elder Steggell was across the chapel, then his fellowship came Tessa and sat on the other side of me. One thing about single's wards it seems, is that it is basically a extension of a High School Lunch room. So everyone sits with there group of friends. Well Mike had to leave and that left me and Tessa sitting together. So Weird. I mean I didn't really feel awkward, just it was bizarre. I made sure to slide like 4 feet away. I'm not taking any chances at getting Emergency transferred out of this place! I love it.
Plus we got a new bishopric this week and the bishop is a guys dad that I love in Universal City! Instant connection. We are going to baptize the world.

Elder Steggell and I have been working really hard. We really didn't have many or any people when we got together and are working to build it up. We got three to church yesterday which was so great, but we want to always improve. We have a goal this transfer to baptize 13 people and have 4 weeks left to do it. Our philosphy has become "If you want to accomplish something that has never been done, you have to do things that you have never done!" So we instituted that idea this week and tried to talk to absolutely every single person. When we were driving away from an apartment complex there was a guy walking around and we rolled down the window and I said "Hey we have a message about Jesus!" He turned around, yep totally the same guy that the day before chewed us out for soliciting. He took a picture of our license plate and proceeded to chew us out for 20 minutes. I argued with him for a bit, and he said he took the BAR exam or something I told him that we were basically going to do what we were going to do and that was that. He said he was reporting us and that we might get fined and up to 6 weeks in jail or something. That would be one crazy transfer. It is what it is.

I also had another exchange this week with Elder Condie. We went and baptized a guy over on the east side of San Antonio and then went to a super fancy restaurant in Tim Duncan's neck of the woods. Of course, Timmy has bigger things to do then eat out this time of the year, but he goes to BJ's all the time to eat. I had a Bison Burger and Wings. So good for real.

However that was pretty neat, the greatest thing to happen on the exchange was that we went to dinner in his area we walked for an hour to get there and when we showed up this guy answered the door and let us in. We sat down and had dinner, his sister showed up and talked to us for a bit, she was kinda weird, the guy said he wasn't a member but grew up in Ogden so I pretty much taught him the Restoration. Apparently, the guy had just had his records removed and hated the church. Whoops, So Elder Condie and I were like dang... He is going to hate the pushy missionary's now and his family is going to be ticked. Then we got a Phone call from his sister and she told us how much she appreciated what we did and how much he actually had enjoyed it and that it meant alot to him. It was the first time anyone had been able to talk to him about the gospel in a really long time. All out of complete obliviousness. Miracles really do happen. The spirit is such a powerful thing. It has the power to penetrate the smallest of crevasses if we are willing to allow our hearts to be opened. I know that the spirit is what converts and that our personalities and love for others is what can allow them to open the door to the spirit. That is why it is so important to balance both of them together. Miracles do still happen!

Remember who you are and what He stands for!
Elder Paul Funk