The slowest month of my life

Sister Alex Solomon

My zone after our service project

First off, thank you for thinking about me when it's super hot because the heat is so terrible here..I was biking in 117 degrees the other day. 117 DEGREES!!! It was the worst! But I feel somewhat accomplished I guess. We biked 10 miles in it. I also experienced my first dust storm this week. It was a really minor one but it was still kind of cool. I got some video. We were just studying in our room when a bunch of random stuff started hitting our windows. We've also had tons of excessive heat warnings popping up on our phones and iPads.

So last Wednesday, we had our first zone service project. We worked with the city of Phoenix and helped these people in a REALLY ghetto side of town clean up their back yard. And these people had a lot of stuff. Im talking, like hoarding here. It was nasty. We found some weird things.....used needles, tons of coolers filled with what looked like rotting meat, and poop (they don't have a dog), just to name a few. I will send you the picture of all of us looking fake happy when we were done. It wasn't all bad. We got to bond with our zone which was nice but you can even tell in the picture how separated the elders and sisters are all the time. I just want to talk to the elders and be like, "you know you can make eye contact with me right?" But some of them are cool and will talk to me. You'll notice in the picture that I was trying to bridge the gap.

Something funny happened this week! Our zone leaders emailed us and said that if any of use had a file named "The Aphrodite Project" on our iPads, we were supposed to delete it. We didn't have it but we asked our sister training leaders about it and they told us. So one of our zone leaders (whose name happens to be elder Leavitt) is really into math. I guess him and his last companion started this complicated equation that is based on the hot crazy matrix and is supposed to help you find your wife. It turned out to be like 6 pages long! So they sent it to one of their elder friends serving in Germany and he sent it on and I guess now it's in a bunch of missions all over the world. Anyway, somehow the mission department in Salt Lake got it and were not happy about it..our mission president got a phone call from Lynn G. Robbins of the seventy and he was "furious". Also, this week, our zone leaders had a fireside at which a member of the seventy was going to be speaking! Guess who it was! That's right. That poor elder met President Robbins (who is first in line to be a new apostle this year) face to face and had to talk to him about it. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I feel so bad for him! But also all my roommates were really offended when they heard about the project and I straight up told them that they were freaking out about absolutely nothing. They don't like me now!

Also, I just want you all to know that you can never ever complain about how long church is. Why, you may ask? Because I legit went to 9 hours of church yesterday. Yeah. No complaints. *cough* Connor *cough*

Weirdness....one of my friends from Freshman year at BYU randomly emailed me this week. I don't even think I told him I was going on a mission but whatever. Anyway he sent me this picture from some online LDS thing and told me I had a twin....I'll see what you guys think.

I have been doing better this week but in some ways it has been the hardest week yet. I'm doing better with praying for the desire to be obedient and to read my scriptures. It's sort of working! At least, some days I can't wait to open up my Book of Mormon and start reading. I'm just reading it cover to cover and marking anything that has to do with the atonement so hopefully that will help me understand it better. The bishop that never talks to us agreed to start meeting with us once a week and we were really excited until he canceled on us this week. Yeah, the first week. We also have no new investigators. We are running out of doors to knock on because members are not giving us referrals. So we started a new initiative. I realized that members will never give us referrals if they don't know us and trust us, so I told my companion we need to start getting into members' homes. We have been making phone calls all week setting up short lessons with members so that we can get to know them and encourage member missionary work. Most of the time people don't answer their phones but we got to teach 12 lessons this week, and at church yesterday I felt like I actually knew some people! Hopefully that will keep going well.

Overall, it has been a good week but there have been a couple times where I just wanted to sit down and cry because I was so frustrated with my companion and the other sisters. They always feel a need to check up on me, even if I'm in the bathroom! They'll say, "Sister Solomon, what are you doing? Do you have your iPad with you?" Aaaaah! Oh well. 1 month down, 17 to go!

LOVES

Sister Alex Solomon

Jake said this was my twin.....? 
What do you think?