Drunkards and Temples and Bikes, Oh My!

The Las Vegas Temple

Elder Beltré photo bomb

I love to see the temple!

Elder Alley and Elder Walker

Van Ride Selfies

August 31, 2015

This week was an interesting one. Some real good moments and some not so cool moments. I guess I'll start with the not so cool. Basically, we contacted an aggressive drunk man and he just proved to me yet again how much I dislike seeing people drunk. Well, I mean I've contacted people who were drunk before but they were a happy drunk. This guy was just all mean. He kept telling us to tell him what we were all about, but every time we tried talking he would talk over us, and then would get mad that we weren't answering any of his questions. At one point he got right up in our faces and said, "Tú no sabes nada!" (which is "You don't know anything!") And then he went off about the Bible, and I refrained this time from trying to prove him wrong. We ended up admitting that we're just 2 uneducated white "sons of Donald Trump" (as he called us) and that we would go home and study up the Bible more and then come back and chat. We ended up just laughing at the whole situation, but it is definitely a test of pride and patience to not start up something with people like that. Just sad really to see someone whose entire life consists of working 12 hour days, coming home to drink beer and then sleep to do it all over again the next day. There's so much more to life!

Kind of a rant I guess. Moral of the story: I don't like angry drunk people.

On a brighter note! Elder Walker and I were talking about how we could better get our investigators to be more interested to come to church on Sundays, so we decided to try giving a couple tours of our chapel to some families we are teaching to see if that would help. We ended up having 2 very solid tours! We walked them through the building and talked about the classes and then sat in the chapel and talked about the sacrament and then had a TV there to show the First Vision video and then we walked them to he baptismal font and showed the Bible video of Jesus Christ being baptized and invited them to follow his example and do the same, and both the families that did it said yes! One of them was the family who Moroni (from last weeks email) is living with so we are super excited about them.

We also got to go to the Las Vegas Temple this week as well! I LOVE the temple here. It's my favorite one:) We have all got to take a trip here as a family so I can take ya through it! Always an incredibly spiritual experience when we get to go. 

The other fun thing from this week was that we got to spend a whole day on bike! Our Ford Fusion got recalled because the passenger door refuses to shut (kind of a problem) so we spent a day on bike. Super fun! I would love to be on bike all the time! It was actually the day we were giving the church
tour to a family and we live decently far from the chapel, and we had lost track of time and had to book it there to be able to prep everything, oh yeah, and it was all uphill! With our thighs burning as strong as our testimonies we were able to set an Olympic record, I believe, for fastest bike sprint to a Mormon chapel.

Well, this is the last week of the transfer we are headed into, so you will hear later what is happening with me. I hope to be able to stay one more transfer, but not my will but the Lord's be done. We also have MLC going into all the transfer craziness so it should be a jam packed week. I'll leave with this spiritual thought from the end of 2 Nephi. I have noticed so much on my mission the importance of the scriptures. I love being able to read them and mark them up and make all sorts of connections and more importantly receive revelation as I study the pages of those holy books. I love, as well, how it says in 2 Nephi 29:11 that, "for out of the books which shall be written I will judge the world, every man according to their works, according to that which is written."

We will be judged one day, and the basis, the backbone for the judgment that will make it fair to everyone, will be the scriptures! Most of us have access to them, but not all of us read them! We cannot at the last day look up at God and say, "I just didn't know what you wanted me to do!" because it has all been laid out for us in the holy scriptures. We have to got to be so familiar with the words on those pages because they are the words of Christ, the words of eternal life. And then even later in Jacob it says that people were being wicked because "they understand not the scriptures." If we read them, study them, and live them, we will be ready for that day when we stand in front of our maker again to be judged!

Love y'all!

-Elder Alley