I'm gonna miss Africans....

My subject line is a quote from Elder Richards after we had Fufu with a member for dinner. 

This is the African dish called Fufu. It is a chicken dish. The dumpling in the middle is a type bread. You tear off a piece, dip it in the gravy and pop it into your mouth! You eat the dish with your fingers!

Well this has been a really long week. It's one of those weeks that every day goes really fast, but the week as a whole has just been long. Thankfully we have seen a lot of miracles, so it ended well. 

Something that Elder Richards and I have implemented in the zone is what we call Power Hour. Every companionship dedicates at least one hour every day to hardcore, dedicated, goal oriented finding. Doing finding is the grind of missionary work, and it can be hard to get excited for it, but if you have the right attitude and expect miracles, then you see them. We've only been doing it for a week, but we've already seen the miracles coming from it. Last night it was 8 pm, and it was raining. It was one of those nights that we could have just stayed inside and done some planning and brainstorming for the zone. Instead we decided to do a Power Hour of bell ups, (or ringing door bells, possibly in apartment complexes) We had been going for about 58 minutes (and we had already found some really cool potentials including a Bulgarian family) when we finished one section of bell ups. We stopped, looked at each other and said "One more section before we go back to the car." We pushed through to the end, and found probably the most positive person of the night on that last section. That's how it always goes in missionary work haha. 

Elder Richards braving the rain doing bell ups.

I think what I've been thinking most about this week is a line in a song that Elder Richards and I both love. The line says "I found my life when I laid it down." Of course that makes me think of "Lose yourself to find yourself", but I think it goes a bit deeper than that. This is on the tail end. This is coming from someone who already laid down their life. 

I was thinking about my mission (of course..... typical, I know) and I realized that although I didn't "Lay my life down" literally, in a lot of ways every missionary does lay down their life. We give up a lot. Elder Richards and I were talking about how crazy we are. We spend a ton of money to come here for two years, obey rules that to most people don't make sense, work our tails off for 2 years from 9-9, 7 days a week, face rejection everyday, and yet somehow it's all still worth it. I have in a lot of ways "found my life" while on my mission, and I'm so grateful for that. 

Have a great week everyone! 

Love you, bye!

Elder Muller

And now, for your viewing pleasure, Elder Richards demonstrating the fine art of eating Fufu!