The Happy Birthday Kid

            Well, I'm officially 21 now, which is really weird.  I thought being 20 was weird.  I hope that ya'll baked and saved a cake for me for when I come home :).  (Mmmmmm....yellow cake with chocolate frosting - using best Homer Simpson voice.)  So we did not have the greatest week (especially with finding new investigators), but we were able to teach some good lessons and make some progress this week.  We had zone conference on Tuesday where we learned about Testimony and Conversion again.  It was exactly the same from what was presented at MLC/DLC, but with more and better food (which made it awesome).  We were able to teach two of our new investigators that we found a couple of weeks ago, German and Joyce, and we had an great lesson about the Book of Mormon.  They had lots of questions, but we answered them all and read the Book of Mormon with them.  We were only able to teach them once this week, so we don't know yet how it went.  After the lesson, they (like a lot of people that we teach) gave us some snacks at the end of the lesson.  Their snack included iced tea.  We told them that we couldn't drink the iced tea, because of the Word of Wisdom.  They did not understand (because we obviously had not taught that yet) and wanted to know more.  We told them since it's a long lesson that we would teach them next time, but they wanted to know right then, so we taught them a little bit about the Word of Wisdom.  We told them to keep praying to know if the Book of Mormon is true so they will know for themselves that Joseph Smith was a prophet and was used by the Savior to restore the fullness of His gospel to the earth.



Zone Leader Conference

            On Friday, I went to Santa Rosa to conduct a baptismal interview for an investigator there.  The interview went well and I got to meet some of the local members.  One member that I met, Cherry, is lives in Reno with her husband who also served a mission here.  She is only two months older than I am and has been married for four years.  Anyway, Elder Iligan suggested that I only speak English to her and pretend that it was my first day in the mission field.  So, I played along.  As I started speaking to her in English, I found myself having the hardest time, because when I see a Filipino, my mind doesn't tell me to speak English, so it all came out sloppy.  But she took the bait.  She would talk with my companion about me in Tagalog and I just sat there pretending that I was not picking up every word of their conversation.  When she would leave the room, I would talk with her family in Tagalog so they were in on our little game.  It was actually really funny.  Cherry eventually figured it.  She was a pretty good sport about it.  I also met someone visiting from Reno that came with Cherry.  His name's Tommy.  He is 21 and goes to the community college in Reno studying Animation.  Tommy wants to work at Pixar or something.  He was a pretty cool kid.  I could speak English with him well, so I guess my English only goes blank when I try to speak it with Filipinos (haha).


(From left): Jordan, Cherry, Cherry's sister, and a young woman holding a copy of
The Book of Mormon in Tagalog

           We had a service project the next day in one area of the Zone to clean up this a care center, paint some things, cut out some things, and cleaned up the gutters outside (which was really gross).  I painted this small playhouse thing with Elders Branham and Park and it was fun.  They kept challenging me with riddles, which made me wonder whether I am a very deep thinker (since I was not so great at solving them).  Great.  I guess I've been away from school too long.  (haha)

Cleaning gutters was a very dirty job

            My birthday was pretty fun.  I received some phone calls and letters from other missionaries and members, so that was fun.  We didn't have any investigators or an increase in sacrament meeting attendance, which was disappointing, but I guess there's always next week.  We worked with the branch missionaries Sunday evening and had a really great dinner.  Thank you by the way to all of you who sent me birthday letters/emails.  (Yes Mom, I did get that envelope with the letters in it and loved it!)



            I hope that all is well in Las Vegas and that kids are now enjoying their summer breaks.  I'm excited for it to start cooling down here.  This may be my last full week in Cab with transfers coming up on June 20.  I expect I will be moved to my last area soon.  Man, that is so hard to believe!  K.  Love ya'll!  Stay safe!

            Elder Jordan "21:Black Jack" Royal



Jordan at a driving range on a zone activity