Well last week I told you all that I didn't have anything really exciting to write about...well this week I do.
Well to start off I just have to say. Don't eat the cereal, and this will make sense later on. So the week started off great, it was Tuesday we had a devotional and were all excited for that, then at lunch we decided as a district to eat a whole tower of cereal(those big ones they sometimes have in hotels and stuff) so we chose marshmallow mateys and started eating. Well we end up finishing it(54 bowls in total) and I ate 11 of those bowls[and another lesson to learn is if you eat that much cereal the top of your mouth will be fairly scraped up the next few days. But we did it and it wasn't that hard to do. But then someone from our district had the idea to write our District number on a napkin letting everyone know that we ate it and that we were the best missionaries and were really awesome and stuff and then we would put that napkin on the empty cereal tower.(and most the district signed their names to the napkin I didn't because I was in line for a salad) but we put it up, and then go to class feeling happy and what not(also Jin Zhanglao was super excited to do this he was way pumped and ate 12 bowls of cereal...not sure how he got one more than me I was trying to watch him to make sure we were even, I kind of think he only ate 11 because I took one of his bowls and I think he forgot about that fact so I kinda think he only had 11. Anyways) we go through the rest of the day and it's going good at our devotional Elder Kospiche from the 70 came and gave a good talk about...well I can't remember what it was about so it wasn't super memorable. But that was kinda the end of Tuesday.
Then Wednesday we wake up do the normal things we always do, get ready for for the day and as we're walking into our classroom to begin personal study there is a man standing outside our room(older official looking guy) and we all walk in and he joins us and closes the door. So then he starts off with "We'll I'm here to talk about an incident that happened yesterday that you were all a part off..." and then he proceeds to pull out the napkin that we left yesterday. And then he afterwards proceeds to tells us how we shouldn't have eaten the cereal or left the note and that because we ate all the cereal it wasn't a very missionary thing to do(which in hindsight I agree with) but then he asked us what we should do to make restitution, so we wrote a letter to president Burgess, and the cafeteria, and he also "invited" us to call our stake president(also sometime during this Elder Falck[the foreigner from Sweden] made sure to let this guy know that he didn't eat any of the cereal and that he was pure....yeah maybe not the best time to bring that up because he already mentioned if you didn't eat of the cereal then you had nothing to worry about anyways) so after he leaves we all get in and uproar about how this seems so ridiculous that we have to call our stake presidents about eating a bunch of cereal. And that kinda lasted the whole personal study(also this guy kinda made us all feel like really bad missionaries because of what we did so we weren't the happiest bunch after that) but we also told all the other districts not to eat the cereal and everyone pretty much just laughed about it.
But we go to lunch and we didn't eat any cereal, but afterwards a few of us go to call our stake presidents from that man's secretaries office(also all of us weren't really sure what to say...because it's such a weird situation) but we call our stake presidents and mine didn't really say anything about it, just "oh, ok, uh are you going to do it again?" and no, of course. But then Elder Puzey's stake president just laughed at how ridiculous all of this seemed (as did most of the others I just mention Elder Puzey's because his stake president REALLY laughed, it's a pretty great story) then we headed to class and during it at some point our teacher told us that we can't give up because we're almost done, and also that we are all lacking something in our lessons, and that hit pretty hard because we all wanted to be good missionaries(and it especially hurt because of what happened in the morning. So we all meet at dinner and decided that today is like the worst day ever. And yeah that was what happened Wednesday...super fun...
then on Thursday we start the day off well, but then during class our teacher tells us that none of us look happy(which was probably kind of true) and after that she leaves to go be an investigator, and we're sitting there....and our district just explodes.....like wow it was super crazy...we were super loud and all upset and feeling bad because of the whole cereal thing, and also because our teacher told us we don't seem very happy, and it was kinda disappointing, but we kind of exploded...it was intense, not in the good way..so we all decided to take a little walk and when we reconvene we find that one of the missionaries in our district is in the process of arranging an interview with a District President (some pretty important guy) and we're all scared because we don't want to get in more trouble than we already are. I get the feeling I should pray and the room is loud but I continue to pray-- as I was praying the Spirit came over me super powerfully, like it was really strong and I felt prompted to continue praying. As I continued praying people's voices started to die off I kept praying and more voices would stop talking(and at this time I was feeling the Spirit super strong, and kind of felt like Nephi like my body to my fingers I was tingling with the Spirit it was a really powerful experience) then I kept praying and the room eventually became silent, and then I felt like I could stop praying so I did and we all got back to studying. Our evening teacher supported us, and made us feel good, so that was helpful,
And then Friday comes....and the whole week gets better everyone helps us understand it (teachers district president, branch president) and we all learned from it and felt better, and it was a good
Elder Smith
