Elder Jonathan Fraley: Ice Cream Parlor

Hello!

We were on Carmen’s roof taking down Christmas lights. Her daughter was snap chatting us so I had her send one to Aaron haha. I’m excited to go to various restaurants with dad. Riches is going to BYU so he will be close. He already says he’s coming over every day so be ready it was actually a hamster that I was holding. It was cool!

Last Monday was terrible! I won’t go into details but I just had the worst pday of my life. Just absolutely a wreck... that night though I left on exchanges with Elder Thomas so Tuesday was a good one.

Tuesday I was in Galena Park with Elder Thomas. It’s a weird area for sure... that morning we had a lesson with some crazy lady in a sketchy neighborhood. It ate up most of our morning because it was a little further of a drive. I cooked up some bomb sandwiches for lunch though! They were so good. We had some good studies together too. Their neighbors are really loud and obnoxious. We were eating and all of a sudden all these loud noises came from their house. Ghetto areas are crazy. That afternoon we tried lots of people which was fun! We went to mutual that night like usual and exchanged back there.

Wednesday wasn’t too bad. It was actually one of my favorite days in the mission. We visited Lupe in the morning and that was fun. We ate lunch and then went over to the Fuentes. We went with hermano to his son's soccer game. I’m really close with that family so it was a blast! We also went because a lot of the kids on the team are our investigators. We’ve given most of them Book of Mormons. We sat next to an investigator too. Darwin. Unfortunately Salvador and his team lost. It was a good game though. After we ate at their house and had rice with meat and avocado. It was tasty. Then we hurried down to pine trails and took Riches to a lesson. While they were teaching we went to the park and had our weekly soccer game. Good day. We went on exchanges afterwards. I went with Riches.

Thursday was super fun!!! We went on exchanges so Riches and I could plan the district meeting for the next day. We stayed up late talking Wednesday night and so we were tired in the morning haha. We spent most of the day planning but we had good studies and visited some people. We bought these cool hats for our district meeting. I’ll explain later. We had dinner with a super cool family too, the Rendons. Other than that we not much happened!

Friday was also in my top days on the mission. We started by going to district meeting. I gave a funny segment in the first part. After that we got to the fun part... so the topic was creating spiritual baptismal services for our investigators (the assistants come up with the driest ideas... annoying). Because we had a lame topic, we decided to make it fun! I came up with the idea to have a fake ice cream parlor! The hats we bought said "dragon" on them and have cool Chinese writing so we customized them with sharpies, and wrote the names of everyone in the district on them so we would all look like workers. We had ice cream and different toppings. They would receive an “order” and would have to create an ice cream sundae based on what the investigators would like in their baptismal service. We assigned each part of the service a different topping so it turned out to be some tasty ice cream! For example, I got an order for a guy who wanted hymns, a special musical number, or whatever. I would start by scooping some Ice cream and then add toppings accordingly. It was super fun and everyone loved it. After district meeting was over we served the other district some ice cream! I’ll include pictures. After district meeting Elder Riches and I went on splits and taught Carmen and her daughter! It was super fun. She’s such an awesome member already. She’s always bearing her testimony and it’s funny because she is always pushing members to do their best haha. She’s going to be the relief society president one day. After that we all went and ate with the Fuentes. It was sooo fun! We played games and ate hamburgers. They are my favorite family here!

Saturday we did some service in the morning. We helped some people move some things. After that we had lunch. It was good. That afternoon nothing happened really. No one really would talk to us. Oh well. Life goes on.

Sunday was super good too!! Church was awesome and Carmen came as usual. She’s sooo cool. The gospel principles class was good as well. The other Elders had lots of investigators at church so it was good for them. After church we ate dinner with the Tenorios. We had meat and rice with juice of tamarind. It was tasty stuff. After that we drove allllll the way to Kingwood with a member for a monthly mission presidents fireside. We invite investigators, less actives, and recent converts to hear some awesome talks. It was really good and i saw lots of friends. It’s crazy, the hermana that came out with me goes home in 3 weeks... time has flown by!

This week was super good. I hope you all have a good one! Love you guys!