Week 100: Můj člověg Starší Rýže

Elder Smith is dying. Not actually, but if you know missionary lingo, the start of a missionary's mission marks his birth and the end marks his death. I forget that not everybody knows this when I tell a new missionary, "I was born in Nitra."

"What?!" he might react. "You're a Slovak?" 

So Elder Smith is dying. You might remember him from pics in the MTC. I never told you this, but I once threw a missionary handbook at his face at point blank range in the MTC cafeteria. He's also the one I got wormy with in week 48, if you remember that video of us dancing. He's one of my best friends, and luckily I won't miss him for too long because he's leaving only six weeks early for school.

Elder Abbott is really cool, not just because he listens to almost everything I say. I tell him that tracting isn't the most effective and he believes me. Disclaimer: if you served a mission and really got a kick out of tracting, I'm not taking that away from you. However, the way most homes are set up here combined with the people's negative perception on proselytizing, especially the door-to-door approach, does not provide an ideal environment for much positive interaction while tracting. 

That being said, we went to deliver a letter we wrote to a member we haven't seen in a while. Because she lives in a small town, we decided that if she wasn't home, heaven forbid, we would go tracting. In the end, she was home but didn't want a visit right then. So you know what that means. 

HIT THE STREETS!

Tracting was going about as well as I expected. In the middle of our glorious hour of ringing doorbells, we got a call from the zone leaders. 

Elder Clayton: "Hey, did you already send in IMOS this week?" 

Me: "Yeah, don't worry. By the way, guess what we're doing? Tracting."

Elder Clayton: "Seriously?! Why??"

Me: "I don't want Elder Abbott to take my word alone about how tracting is."

Elder Clayton: "Ahaaa, smart guy. Alright, see you on our exchange."

Then we got a call from the assistants to the president. 

Elder Mangum: "Hey, Elder Aillery. Will you give the opening prayer for progressive training on the 8th?" 

Me: "I'll have to think about it. By the way, we're tracting right now."

"Wait, why?" 

"We literally have nothing else to do."

When we got home, Elder Clayton shot me a text: "Did you finish tracting? How did it go?"

"We finished," I wrote. "We got two contacts, actually. One on the train back to Banská Bystrica and one on the bus back home." Tracting was fun, though.