Olney Closing & Spanish Splits

March 2, 2015

So for the past 2- 2 1/2 weeks elder fisher and I kind of had an idea that our area would soon be closing. And Saturday, it was official. In a call out our zone leaders made, they announced that me, elders fisher, swensen, and la rotta will be closing our areas... Swensen and
La Rotta are our roommates in the Spanish program. Both of our wards will now just have sisters in our areas. My guess is that President Cooke wants the mission to be 50% elders and 50% sisters. I don't know why, but he is following the promptings he gets, and that is good. But now I can start talking about my week!

Last Tuesday we had 2 general authorities come and speak to our mission: Elder Schwitzer and Elder Gonzales (I am not sure on spelling so please don't hate me lol). The reason why they came, is because the church is now rolling out the new and very much improved iPads and training that comes with it. The 
church is giving all the missions in the US brand new iPads with the new software, security and other features. As policy, we will not be able to use Facebook for at least 2 months, essentially a "Facebook fast" as we train with the actual

Elder Minion

iPads and stuff. The training in total takes about 6 weeks to complete.

Wednesday was our temple trip for dying missionaries. Once a transfer the missionaries gather and go to the temple. One of the blessings of having a temple in the mission :)

Thursday we went on exchanges with our roommates swensen and la rotta. Swensen took my place in the English area and I replaced him in the Spanish. Let's just say that I wasn't blessed with the spirit of discernment haha. The Spanish program is kinda cool, they get fed A
LOT.  That's a blessing and a curse because I like food, but I want to maintain a healthy weight. So far I have lost 8 pounds! And I'm not even in a bike area! ;)

Friday we didn't do much really... I had therapy in the morning, which went good but then I go back to having the regular pain in my ankle. I would be just sitting down and then will come and my ankle will make my whole leg twitch. It's weird haha. then we did normal studies after that. We went to the church after to just update our area real good for the sisters who will be taking over.

Saturday, we had dinner at the Velasquez's home. They have a son on a
mission In twin falls, Idaho Spanish speaking! And they are such a
great family! After dinner, they gave us a bag of food from the dinner
and some cereal because #whynot? Hhaha no they really love
missionaries.

Then Sunday, we had are ward council meeting in the morning, and when
we were done, it was snowing.... We went home, did some studying, then
went back to the church for ward correlation meeting and it was
raining, but it was freezing rain... About halfway through our second
meeting, and we get a voicemail. We didn't listen to it till after
sacrament because due to the weather, that's all they were planning to
have. So we listened to the message and we were back inside for the
rest of the evening. We had a member drop off some food that we were
supposed to go over to that night, but because of the weather we
couldn't.

And that was our week! Just to remind you again, there will now be 2
ways of contacting me: by letters, and by my email. Not facebook.
Also, I have deactivated my personal facebook account and will be
using my mission one. That will become my regular Facebook after the
mission is done.

Love you all. Have a great week!

Elder JT Ekberg