We volunteer at the soup kitchen every Thursday and they had some leftover bread from last week so we went and gave it out to the homeless. A lot of them seem to really love Jesus, just came under some unfortunate circumstances and can't really do much for themselves now. One homeless man that was quite drunk sang me a couple songs about Jesus before going and cussing out another homeless guy.
We also got to go down to Vermont for follow-up training, and on our way stopped by the Joseph Smith Memorial where he was born. It was cool to see the birthplace of Joeseph Smith and think about what came to pass from such humble beginnings. President Blair spoke a lot about fully committing ourselves to the mission and "burning our ships." I hope I can be diligent in applying the things he taught us. It was also interesting to see how all the other new missionaries I flew in with are doing.
We decided to go Christmas caroling at the mall with some of the other missionaries. We wore Christmas lights and hats. It was fun for about 20 minutes, until security showed up. I think it may have been because the singing wasn't that great, but they said we weren't allowed to carol at that particular mall without permission, which makes sense I guess if you're Scrooge.
We finally got to go to the temple last week! It was awesome to bring a couple of recent converts to teach them about temple covenants and be part of their first experience with it. It was quite refreshing because we're not allowed to make many temple trips because the drive is so long.
I also went on my first companionship exchange. The other companionship is a trio, and a couple of them have a hard time getting along and it was probably good for them to get a break. I was stuck with a very prideful missionary (who has only been out for a couple months) and basically had to lay down the law a little bit. The reason they hadn't gotten along was because he was quite prideful and controlling, and not great with people. I got to see it firsthand as we were planning in the morning and he refused to take the third companion's ideas into account and seemed to think only his mattered. So I pulled him into the other room and taught him somewhat about how to get along with other people and basically that he's not as important as he thought he was. He seemed to have a hard to with that and even got worse after until I was a bit harder on him later on in the day and he softened up. It was a good experience to see what it's like to be with a hard companion and also how exchanges are going to be in the future.
Unfortunately we have had a lot of our appointments with people we're teaching fall through and that's been discouraging. However there are a couple people who seem to be progressing well and coming to know of the truth in the Book of Mormon and the Church.
Until next week,
Elder Martin.
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