Pennies for a missionary

19 October 2013

This week has flown by it's crazy. I feel like it was just the other day that I was writing one of these letters. This week marked my one-month point at the MTC. I'm starting to get a bit tired of the food here but sometimes in the evenings back at residence you can find something good. One such thing I found was Mrs. Renfro's salsa. Probably the best salsa I've had in a long time. It has a ghost pepper in it apparently, I don't know if that's true because ghost peppers are supposed to be insane.

Also, the devotional that I was curious to see who was speaking was this Tuesday. It was Elder Oaks. For those of you who don't know who Elder Oaks is, he is part of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles in our church. It's a fairly big deal to have had him speak here. He gave a really good talk about how to transition from teenagers to missionaries. He also talked about respecting other people’s faith and encouraging them to keep practicing everything in their faith that is true and good. This really speaks to me because going to Japan I think the people there are amazing. And I want the church to be able to improve their lives not completely rebuild it.

So in our district we have an Elder from Brazil. Elder Siedschlag is his name. A couple of weeks ago I found a penny on the ground and gave it to him. He was kinda offended. He made a remark that he was so happy because he could feed his family for weeks now. I felt really bad. I didn't mean to offend him. Picking up change is just a habit I have. It's free money. So I decided that every penny I found I would give to him :D This went on for a couple of weeks and I got my room in on it. And slowly the entire floor got on to it. We would find tons of pennies everyday in the hall left for Siedschlag. However, Thursday was probably the peak. I think we probably gave him around 250 pennies in just that day. Now he’s no longer offended by it, but it was become a bit of a game. I still have a drawer of pennies, and we hide them in his stuff, and clothes, and food. And it's awesome to see his face when he finds it. He says at the end of our time here that he's going to buy a ton of snacks for our district with all the pennies. It kind of reminds me of the law of particles. That if you continue to do small things. Even if at the time, like a penny it seems worthless, that something great can come of it.

That pretty much sums up this week except for the fact that Elder Sawyer dislocated his ankle. It popped back in but he says it still seems a little funny. I'll let you know if anything comes of that. I appreciate all the love that I've been feeling from my friends and family while I've been here. 

See you guys next week,

Elder Davies