Zone conference, Skype and Ty's mission call

May 15th

Hey everyone back home! 

So my week was pretty good. I'll start with the beginning of the week.

On Tuesday we had Zone Conference which is always fun. President gave a training on the talk given by Gary B. Sabin "Be All In" and it was great. It really made me think, am I 'all in' with my work here on the mission: Am I doing everything I can with the time I have here? The same thing will apply to every part of my life, including after the mission. 2 things that he said that I really like are "When we're all in, we will want to do all the small things, not just do them because we're suppose to." and "We cant expect blessings if we aren't being as obedient as we can. When we aren't all in, we lose some of our greatest blessings." I always look forward to Zone Conferences, I learn a lot! Something else fun that happened is I got to se Lehi! He's the member in my last area that always is helping the missionaries, he's almost a missionary himself. Because of him, that area has baptized a ton of people and has a group of 20 or 30 people each sunday! The stake president is saying that by the end of the year, it should be a branch. Lehi's the man! It was a blast to see him again.

This week was pretty funny for lunch. Normally we eat lunch with members, but this week we only ate with a member one time and for all the rest of the days we had nothing. One of the members gave us some money for food which was good. So, we went to the store and bought food to make for the whole week. The other elders in my house can cook, which is good because I cant cook at all! We actually ate pretty well, I was impressed with the other elders. Pasta, a bunch of different types of meat, rice, etc. your typical brazilian meal but it was still good. On Friday we did splits with the district leader. My companion went with him to his area and his comp came here with me. His name is elder Sanchez, another elder from mexico. We didn't have a a ton of people to teach, so we went crazy with finding new investigators and were able to find 8 people that accepted another visit which is really good! It's been awhile since I've found that many people in one day willing to listen to us, so we were happy with our work. 

On Saturday we had a big ward activity for Mothers Day. The stake president's wife found out that Elder Boldrin and I play guitar, and so he asked us to participate and play some songs with some sisters from the ward. It was really cool! We got the church decorated with hearts and stuff and were able to play 2 songs for the ward. It was fun! At night, we went to a less active members house to share a message and invite her to church. We were walking there when the other companionship in the ward called us. There was a member in the ward who was getting on their case about visiting a referral she gave that day of another inactive member. She said that the referral needed help spiritually and mentally. When we got to the first less active members house it was already 815, so we decided that we wouldn't have enough time to visit the referral that night. But as we left the less active's house, we both felt like we should visit the referral. The problem was we didn't have the map, the address to the house, or time to visit! But we knew we needed to at least stop by. So we called another member to get the address and somehow made our way to the right house. We were let in by a girl who's about 10 years old. We went and met her mom, who was the referral that needed help. Her name is Taila, and I'm not going to get in to all the problems that she has, but I'll say that she probably has had the hardest life of anyone that I've personally met. I couldn't believe all the trials that she's had to go through! I was in shock as I was listening to her tell us about her hardships. I'm still not 100% sure how I'm going to help her, but we are for sure going to do our best.

Sunday was the highlight of the week! Mothers Day and getting to Skype the family! It was super fun to be able to see everyone again. The craziest part was when Ty read his call to me. When he was opening it, it was like I was opening my own call all over again, I was super nervous! But, for those of you who don't know yet, he's going to the Brazil Fortaleza mission!!!!! I couldn't believe it, Ty's going to Brazil too! I was so happy and I'm super proud of him. So cool that my brother and I will serve in the same country. Also shoutout to my cousin Kaylee, congrats on getting your call to Philadelphia, that's so cool!!! I'm super grateful for my family and all the the support I have from them. A big thank you to all my friends back home and serving around the world too, you guys are awesome!

That's all from me this week, I hope all you guys back home have a great week!

-Elder Odom