Elder George Alexander: I experienced my first Monsoon

Sept 2, 2013
Well let me tell ya, when it rains it pours. Literally. This week, we had rain. The first wave of it was on Tuesday I believe, we were going to talk to a referral with a young man named Tate that is about to head to Peru on his mission. We were walking up to the door and the lady was sitting outside, we she saw us she yelled, "I can not talk to you today!!" in an angry (what we believe to be) Yugoslavian accent. As she storms inside a single drop of rain falls in front of me about the size of a 50 cent coin. It was completely sunny. As we got back in the car the heavens were opened and gallons upon gallons of water fell upon us. It was insane. It lasted all of 6 minutes but it was nuts. (I believe the Yugoslavian woman was behind it but that's neither here nor there.)

And then on Friday I experienced my first Monsoon. Just as we got back to the apartment for dinner (the member we were going to eat with had to cancel, but we had left overs so don't you fret) it started trickling. Within fifteen minutes the right outside our apartment was a like and right out back there was a river. The wind was absolutely INSANE. The thing is the ground in AZ is so hard. So, when you pour tons of water on it it doesn't seep in. It flows. The roads were rivers, in some places I heard it was up to peoples waists. We obviously didn't go out on our bikes but a member in a big ol truck came and picked us up which was nice. The next day all the water was dried up and there were seriously fallen trees around every corner. And dirt covered the roads. I actually crashed on my bike because of a darn sand bank that was left over on the sidewalk.

Emerald is in our area but she is actually about to move to our Zone Leaders area so we're probably going to move her this week but we're going to teach her tonight! As for Jamie and Marlysa they love us too much to stop meeting with us haha. They just like their smokes and drinks a lot and they're having a hard time letting that go. They also have a lot of legitimate questions, we're stilling working with them. Focusing more on Marlysa right now because Jamie is a little stagnant. We fasted for them yesterday so we're hoping to see miracles ensue.

This week we found a lot of new people by going to members that the ward hadn't heard from for a while and finding out if they still lived there. They never still live there. So... We teach the people there! It's an awesome way of tracting because we have a different purpose and then we find out when they moved in where they're from and boom their walls are down. It's been cool.

We also had a lot of people cancel, or just not be home which is ALWAYS discouraging but we did pretty good at staying on our toes and staying motivated. I was able to go and watch the movie about Joseph Smith yesterday and it was amazing. I've seen it tons but this time it really hit me when he was riding his horse to Carthage. The scene right before he says to the brethren, "My mission is to testify of Christ. I know He lives." (Something like that.) And he knew that he was going to seal that testimony with his blood. I have that same calling, obviously at a different level but still it's the same. Would I be willing to seal that testimony with my blood? I know that Joseph Smith was a Prophet. The Spirit testifies it to me every single day.

Thank you for everything, I'm going to include some pictures for you so ENJOY!!! I hope you have an awesome week, tell everyone I love em!

Love, Elder Alexander