Elder AJ Halling Boston Massachusetts Mission: Exhausting but generally average week!!

Man, this week was basically average. Really no progress from any investigators or anything exciting that happened. So in advance, I apologize if this isn't the most exciting email. Haha.

Chinatown, we visited on P day a couple of weeks ago!

One of the shops in Chinatown.

This week our focus was on finding investigators that we haven't seen in a while, and making sure they're still interested, getting their new phone numbers, setting up appointments, etc.

Life is definitely crazy with 24+ investigators (we picked up two more in the last two weeks!) Every Thursday is weekly planning day, where we sit down and plan for everyone on a personal basis. So for every investigator, recent convert, and less active we sit down and ask ourselves "Who are they?" "What do they need?" and "What are we going to do to address those needs?" It can take over an hour for each person. The process is really cool, we really break everything down and figure out how we can help them better their lives. It still blows my mind that people will listen to some 18 year old white kid from Utah. So that took all day Thursday.

We had a pretty cool opportunity this week to give one of our investigators a blessing. I can't remember if I wrote about Babout & Selann in my last week's email, but Selann who is a bit older had a stroke a while back and her health is just not going very well. The past two weeks her ankles have been really swollen and she hasn't been able to walk. We visited them on Saturday night and offered a blessing, she accepted and the spirit was really strong in there. 4 priesthood holders giving a blessing in an investigators house, that's pretty cool. Her sister, Babout just kept saying "m tre kontan." over and over again, which means I'm so happy.

Elder Davey can dunk!

I didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose me!

Elder Davey and I, killing it of course.

For the funny story of the week, I was on exchanges with Elder Warner, one of our zone leaders, and we were going to get onto a bus in Mattapan and a drunk guy steps off the bus and starts trying to help everyone get on (Including Elder Warner and I). While he's doing this he's just falling over and mumbling, and then he sees us, asks us for money, and then starts yelling "PRIVATE MILTON. US NAVY. ONCE A SAILOR ALWAYS A SAILOR." Then he stops for a second, looks at us, "PRAISE JESUS." Then he comes up to us, and yelling again "I LOVE YOU!!!!!!" Then gives both Elder Warner and I a hug. Everyone on the bus, including us was just busting a gut. Really really funny. I felt bad for him though, I don't think I've ever seen someone that drunk before!