Week Forty Seven - "McKinney Madness"!

Buenos dias!

   Tom went on a date?!  Em set a date?!!  Y'all are still making bowls and plates?!!!  Dad's already fixed the fence?!!  Mom watched conference?!  Gosh I've got a great family : ) 

   Everything is just great here in McKinney.  We had a good, productive week topped off with 10 joyous hours of General Conference.  I am very happy to y'all watched and enjoyed as well.  I feel bad for those people that miss out on Conference.  Those men really did reveal to us the secrets of God!  Conference Sunday evening is always a sad time.  You look forward to Conference for so long, and then it finally comes, and it is gone before you know it!  I couldn't get enough of that stuff!  But I do look forward to being able to read and study and apply the words that will soon come in the Church magazines.  Thank you, Mom, for accepting and acting on my invitation and listening to Conference. 

   McKinney did in fact get hit by some crazy weather this week.  The worst of it hit the surrounding cities, but there was tornado warning alarms going off, as well as marble sized hail.  It was insane!  I had never seen anything like it!  It was fun, but my watch got wet and now only works off and on.  Are watches fixable from water damage?

   Tatiana, our golden investigator, amazed us once again this week.  We asked her to read a chapter in the Book of Mormon before we came back again.  When we came back, she had read the chapter three times and marked up nearly the entire chapter with a highlighter.  She came prepared with questions.  When we asked her if it would be too much for her to read two chapters in the Book of Mormon as well as a pamphlet before we came back again, she answered with a "claro que no!" (of course not!)  She is eager to learn and already believes the Book of Mormon is true!  There are only two problems: she works on Sundays, and because she is here with a visa and speaks no English, her options are very limited on where she can work.  She also returns home to Mexico in about a month.  I don't know how we are going to do it, but we are praying for a miracle!

   For the month of April, our zone is competing in what we call "McKinney Madness", where everyday of the month we are competing against someone else in the zone for the most contacts, most lessons, most service hours, or some other aspect of the work.  At the end of the month, we are seeded in a bracket according to our month long season record, and the winner gets a trip to the temple.  That probably doesn't make much sense, but it is lots of fun and gets everybody's competitive juices flowing.  The other day we competed against the Hermanas in our branch for "Line in the Water Time", which is the amount of hours you spend in the day outside, being a real missionary, doing missionary things like teaching, knocking, contacting, and serving.  You do not get line in the water time for studies, eating, time spent with members, or any other activities that take away from the productivity of the work.  Well, as always, the hermanas are good missionaries that always win stuff like this and seem to have better numbers than us.  So we were determined to beat them, and we knew that they were going to do their best to keep there line in the water as much of the day as possible to beat us.  At the end of the day, we had our line in the water for 12 hours.  I think a typical day in our mission is 7 or 8.  The hermanas had 10.5 hours.  However, we did not report our time at the end of the day to the Zone Leaders before they sent out the text message to announce the winners.  So the text message said that they won.  So we immediately called the zone leaders to clear that up, and they said good job, you outworked the hermanas.  So we took that as a win!  This morning, we received a text message from the zone leaders with the standings after week 1, and the hermanas were in first place with an undefeated record!  And we had one more loss than we should have!  "Bologna!" was the first thing that came to my mind.  We called the zone leaders to correct their mistake, and they said they gave the win to the hermanas because we didn't report numbers on time.  So Elder Malpartida and I are quite upset right now.  We play the hermanas twice more this month, and we are determined not only to beat them but CRUSH them!  We are trying to think of ways to sabotage them and keep them from doing missionary work.  Alright, maybe we wouldn't go that far, because that wouldn't be too Christlike.  But!  WE. WILL. BEAT. THE HERMANAS OF THE MCKINNEY 6 SPANISH BRANCH. 

I don't know how much of that made sense, but I explained it as best I could.         

-Don't worry about the toys.  I think we will be able to find enough at dollar stores when we need them.  Thanks for checking though.

-No packages or mail yet.  Elder Haskell told me I got a package back in Lakewood a while back from the Hintons I believe?  It was in the post office in Dallas, he asked them to forward it, and I never got it.  He went back to the post office to see if it was still their, and it wasn't it.  Just thought I would let ya know.  I don't know what can be done about that though. 

-We watched conference at the stake center.  Usually it's just missionaries in the church buildings for Conference, so I am guessing most members have the BYU channel or just watch it online.

-We did hear about President Durrant's new assignment.  He sent a text to everyone right before the Saturday afternoon session, telling us to pay special attention to the releasings and callings.  Nobody knew why, but we figured something important was going to happen!  So that is very exciting, and now I definitely have to go to lunch with him!  We have interviews coming up soon, so I was already planning on inviting him to lunch then. 

-All of my attire is holding up just fine.  I am determined to go my whole mission with only what I have now.  Members have been kind enough to sew shirts and pants for me when necessary, but that hasn't been too often.  All is well! 

That's all for this week.  Thank you for your help with the plan of salvation project.  I am excited to see how it turns out! 

Love and miss y'all.  Have a great week! 

Elder Williams