Week 43 Thanksgiving!

 Monday, November 29, 2021

Good Morning everyone!

It felt like Thursday was another P-Day for me so I can hardly believe it is P-Day haha. But it was another awesome week up here in Traverse City. We made a rap, had Thanksgiving, we had interviews, had exchanges and we had some cool things happen!

Okay the rap! I mentioned last week how we got roped into it. The rap we made was so stressful because we only had like two days to make the entire rap and make the music video. I can't tell you how many times we wanted to quit because our rap sounded so stupid and we thought we were just going to look like clowns in front of the entire mission. But, we ended up finishing it somehow. We called it the "Gratitude Rap" and it was straight fire. We had a bunch of other missionaries in the music video we made and it ended up being really funny. Elder Tueller and I surprisingly did a good job with it and the mission seemed to really like it. We had a big Thanksgiving devotional and played it on zoom for everyone. At the end, our Mission President gave it two big thumbs up. So, I guess it was good enough for him! If you want to listen to it, hit me up and I will share it with you! 

This week on Wednesday we had interviews with our mission President which was super fun. President Heap is an inspired man and he gave me some really great advice. I am so grateful for him!

On Tuesday we went to Buffalo WIld Wings to prepare for our Blazin' challenge on Monday next week. We got the third hottest wings and tried eating them and we were DYING. It was so hot. I looked over at Elder Tueller with like my 6th wing in my hand and I said "Elder, this is bad" and he just started laughing so hard that he couldn't eat his wings he was crying. Elder Tueller and I have a lot of laughs together. 

Thanksgiving was so much fun! We had some Elders in Manitsee come up and spent the night the day before. It was fun spending the night with them. On Thanksgiving we went to a High School track and did a 5k with our District and the Spanish Elders we live with. For not getting to run very often, Elder Tueller and I did well! I think we had a 36 minute 5k? Afterwards we had a Turkey Bowl and played 6 on 6. The rest of the day, we put some finishing touches on our rap video, called our families and then we went to dinner at this lady in our branch named Sister Burley. She was so kind to have us over! All her kids were hilarious. One of her grandkids was there and he was about Bentley's age. He was talking about Blippi to one of the Sisters and I was like "you watch Blippi??" Blippi is a kids show my little brother used to watch haha. It was a great day!!

On Friday we had exchanges and I was with Elder Rassmussen and Elder Gomez! (Elder Corry also trained Elder Gomez!) It was a lot of fun. They are both some studs and it was great to have them here in Traverse City. We went to MCdonalds for dinner with them and Elder Gomez got 3 Big Macs in the drive-thru and pounded all of them. It was so funny. In the drive-thru line, he kept adding Big Macs to the order. But he said "Eh, I don't know if I can do three" but I got Elder Gomez's back and yelled to the lady "One more big mac on that order!" Sure enough Elder Gomez ate his 3 faster than Elder Tueller ate his one!

We had to spend a lot of time this week on that rap which was frustrating. We probably spent like 7-8 hours on it so we didn't get a lot of time to do missionary work. But when we did we had a lot of funny things happen. We went Preaching By The Way in this neighborhood near our friend Fred's house. We had quite a few funny interactions with people including this one guy who was a huge Green Bay Packer fan. We walked up to his door and Elder Tueller was like "I see you like the Packers man! We don't get to watch football very much, how are they doing?" And he was like "yep, I love the Packers and I love Trump." We looked over and he had all these flags hanging over the highway. It was pretty funny. He loves the Packers and Trump, but he didn't like us very much haha. 

Another funny moment was we knocked and I REALLY had to go to the bathroom. Like, really bad. It was super dark outside (it gets dark here at like 5 now it is so annoying). I found a tree to hide behind and started going! And OF COURSE the ONE TIME we needed a car NOT to drive by a car drives by. Elder Tueller and I were hiding behind trees and we looked so suspicious oh my gosh . Next time I will make sure to go before we knock now. 

This week went by so fast it feels like it was 3 weeks long. I love you all, have a good week!

Elder Elliott