Elder Ira Conner McArthur: ANOTHER WEEK

JULY 16, 2018

Hey family, glad you guys made it to Florida safe. Looks like a good time. Wish I could have a fun vacation, haha. But I'm having a good time here. This past week, we didn't get very much done... it was a pretty crazy week, lots of stuff happened but it was still good.

So Monday was cool cuz after preparation day we found a new Hmong person to teach! She was a really old grandma who was really happy to talk to us. She told us all about her hardships and it was sad hearing that.

Tuesday we saw some people, and then decided we needed to get a post out about Oroville Hmong reading class. So we made that video, and it actually took a lot longer than we planned on... but it was good cuz it reached like 3k people and got mostly good feedback!

Wednesday was zone conference. It was pretty fun to see everyone. We learned some more about working with members and helping people recognize the Holy Ghost. What was funny, so for lunch at ZC we had salad, lasagna, and bread. And then dinner, we had it with an English family that does our laundry, and Elder Bishop and his comp were there too and we had the exact same thing for dinner, hahaha. It was really funny. They're like "do you want seconds?" And I'm like looks like "Elder Bishop's ready for seconds" and they just gave us so much lasagna, hahaha. I'd be good to not have lasagna again for a few months

Thursday, we had a ton planned and we taught Thaomee and Yang again, the one who is on date for baptism. Things are progressing for them, although they still haven't been able to come to church yet. We had a good district meeting too. At zone conference we talked a lot about how to have better district meetings. So about mid afternoon Thursday, we're halfway through personal study and then we get a call from a member saying that one of the older guys in the branch is in the hospital. We go there, gave him a blessing, and then get to work on a service project for another member of the branch who is less active. It was cool to see the whole branch come together. What had happened was the one who went to the hospital was working on this service project for this family when he like kinda collapsed and was in bad shape. Apparently it was heart problems he's had for a while, and he ended up getting a heart bypass... crazy stuff.

Friday, we weekly planned and taught Hmong class. Had like 4 or 5 kids there, it went well. Really not that much to say about Friday.

Saturday, revenge of the maggots. They came back, and they hit hard this time haha. I was about 10 minutes into a good workout when I realize I just about stepped on a maggot, and we go look at by the kitchen and there was probably like 100+ maggots just everywhere. So that ate up our whole morning as we cleaned out the vacuum that hasn't been good in ages, and then vacuumed up all the maggots. It's kinda gross, but the thing that makes me the most sad is how much time it took up. It ate out a huge chunk of our day and schedule. Meanless to say, we've been killing all the flies since then. Saturday night we didn't have dinner, so I'm making a panini, and it was actually pretty dang good... but then later the next morning, about 4 am, I woke up and the panini came back up, haha. I was puking on and off from like 4am-9am yesterday, catching some sleep in between. It was no fun. We just pretty much took the whole day off, had to miss church and just laid in bed all day. What was awesome though was that we like texted Pres. Chue just to let him know we wouldn't make it to church, and he says "my wife can fix that" and within 20 minutes Sister Chue is over with some medicine and instructions on what to do and I was feeling a whole lot better. She's been like texting me a bunch too, seeing how I'm doing. She has taken such good care of me. She's a great mission Hmong mom, haha.

I don't know if I have much else to talk about... this was a cool miracle though. 2 weeks ago we were able to do some service for a member and he took us to a pho restaurant, and there was a guy there who was a worker who I just kinda observed as we ate. I thought maybe we should talk to him, but he was just white and by himself so I was just like eh, it's all good. We left the restaurant, didn't think anything of it until Thursday, we go to the church the first time to get ready for district meeting, and I realized I forgot my notes, so we quickly go home, grab the notes, come back and there's this guy looking in the window of the church. We get out of the car, he starts walking away, so we start talking to him. Turns out he's the same guy from the restaurant and we had an awesome conversation with him! Gave him a pamphlet, and it was cool. Maybe nothing will come from it, but it was good. The Lord is in the small details of our lives.

Love you guys!

Love, Elder Muaj Koob