Conference was amazing! LOOK UP ELDER OAKS TALK! Talk about a serious Judge-handled case! The tithing plan is great, thanks! Here’s quick experiences:

Ive ran into so many people from mesa/gilbert. Also people I knew….That i forgot I knew! Did I mention I saw my friends Identical twin? Weirdest experience.

While here in the MTC inspired thoughts keep coming to me and I share them allllll the time in class when they ask for us to share/when I welcomed the new missionaries in as their Zone Leader, etc. I would lay in bed at night thinking about it and I said, “Elder [Gibson], I talk too much…” and he replied, “In a jerkish kind of way? Yeah.” Then the conversation turned to something else between him and others and when it got quiet again, I apologized to him for talking too much and he said it was alright. I told him i’d apologize to the sisters the following day. Then I told him I want to be the best missionary I can, and asked him to give me feedback on what I could do better. He started, “Well….” *Big Pause* “I don’t think I could have a better companion. Sorry Elder Hatch and Burkey, you got the short end of the stick!” We all laughed hard. It made me feel good because we have so much in common, but He can get on my nerves at times, but it never stays that way.

Vocal Point came and sung to us as Sunday devo! It was sweet! Got some pictures with some of them :]

Do you want to hear about my hardest experience yet? Of course you do! Here we go: My companion and I have been doing a roleplay with an “Investigator” named Paul. He is actually my teacher, but he changes and goes into a certain room set up as a living room. We have to come knock on his door and such and teach him – every day this week. My teacher BECAME this Paul (which character we found out was actually someone he taught on his mission in Brazil). First lesson we went in and got to know him a bit, his chair was turned in a way that we were teaching the side of him, he was constantly touching his face, not looking us in the eye, and was just AWKWARD. We got through our lesson, but before we could invite him to pray, his phone vibrated. “Sorry, my girlfriend needs me to pick her up.” I totally saw him MAKE his phone vibrate. He let us leave with us saying a prayer, then hurried us out. We were feeling HORRIBLE after that! His phone even vibrated during the prayer! We walked away with our heads down. We went back to our classroom where our district was studying. After the roleplay, Brother Richardson came and pulled us out of the room. “So, howd it go with paul” (which was himself). And we just didnt want to answer. He then gave us a bunch of stuff to look through in PMG. We felt like babies. My energy comes from the positive view of me from my teachers/parents/adults. The next day like 3 of the teachers in our room kept coming to us as if we didnt have clue what we were doing – we feeling like babies. I hated bro. R. at that point. I felt like we were above this. “The others don’t have the teachers constantly helping them.” I was attentive, but I just loathed that day. The following day we had gym. We played BBall and Elder G. pulled his back doing a layup. We went to the dorm and got showered and ready for class, but were like running up the stairs 6 min. late. On the last flight of stairs, one of my like 5 teachers looks down at us and said, “Hurry!” We said, “Sorry, we had some crazy gym time!” “Thats no excuse!” That just made me so mad! The sisters were late like every day, and us – five min. early……But the ONE day we were late he shoots us down. When we get to class, Bro Richardson says, “What are you late Elders?” *Explaination* “Never do it again.” So I was devastated that my teachers were treating me like a baby from the last few days and then this day they get angry at us. I was on the edge. To make matters worse, It was planning time – for what we were going to teach Paul that day. I never wanted to see Paul again – because he was my angry teacher and plays super awkward. I asked what Elder G. and I should teach Paul: “Should we try to finish the last lesson (That he kicked us out early) or should we teach something else?” The teachers were all puposefully answering in a vague way – we couldnt figure out what to do – I tried to explain why Im stressed, and Brother Cena came to us and directed us to a certain PMG page that we had already read and told us this would help – It seemed to have NO connection to the question we had. I was ticked. I just decided to close my mouth, let him talk to me, then let him leave so I could figure it out alone. BUT when I tried that, he said, “Elder Householder, you look sad…” And he was right – I was on the verge of tears – It took EVERYTHING I had to just not ball right in front of everyone because I wasnt being understood, I was mad, and when I tried to hide it, he asked if I was sad. I answered him, “Just trying to calm down. Continue.” and It took like 20 min. for me to shove that cry-feeling down and out of me for that class period. The next day, we talked about stress management….How coincidental. A Different teacher that would come in occasionally talked to me, not knowing my stress, and asked what stressed me out the most. I told him that full story, and he just sat and listened. He made me want to cry tears of joy just because he cared enough to listen when the others wouldn’t. He also explained that the teachers weren’t trained to act the way they did, nor were they trained to answer questions vague like that – so he apologized for them and was just amazing. I was SO glad he was in our class. Then 10 min later he said goodbye because hes going to be the new missionaries teacher the next day. Then things picked up and I was actually looked at positively by my teachers again and I was ok. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that small 5 min act of kindness.

We’ve had a lot of success since then – but I may have to write about it because times almost up!

Elder Householder