Elder Jonah Dorrance's Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Mission: Week 8/9 Thanksgiving

Hello!
It's been a long time since I wrote an email like this. Two weeks is a long time. I'm not gonna go into huge detail from the past two weeks because I'm lazy and don't want to type that much haha but since the twelfth nothing happened until the 16th which was zone conference which was super weird. It was super cool President made a cool analogy with being busy and being productive. You can take ten steps in place and go nowhere or you can do ten steps forward and go places. Pretty much told us we are doing things wrong and we need to fix them. Then we had interviews which was cool.

After that it was Saturday the 17 and we went to Brother Bob Young's who is an old man who is a convert to the church who has been bed ridden since the 13th of October. We go over there and read scriptures and talk about the gospel with him. He really enjoys it and asked for book of Mormons so he can give them to his hospice workers haha. Then we went over to a family's house for 3 and a half hours to try and bring a tree down. It was about 40 feet tall and they wanted to cut it at about 25 or 30 feet. We started out with trying to get his chainsaw started for about 30 minutes while Elder Jarrett and I chopped at it with a dull rusted hatchet. We got a rope hooked around the top half of it so one person yanked while the other one swung a hatchet at this tree thirty feet in the air. Nobody really thought that one through until after. After we couldn't get the chainsaw going and the hatchet wasn't making any headway on the tree. Brother Shahan climbed thirty feet in the air with a huge sledge hammer and the rusted hatchet and tried hammering the hatchet into the side of the tree. And told us to yank on the tree to see if we could break it. So while he was swaying thirty feet in the air hammering away at the rusted hatchet Elder and Jarret and I just kept pulling on the rope. When that wouldn't work he got his tractor and attached the rope to it and tried backing up to pull the tree down haha. After all that the tree still stood. Looking down at our stupidity. Finally after all of that, he remembered he had a second chainsaw and we got the tree down in about 10 minutes.

And then nothing really happened until the next week when we went on exchanges with the zone leaders on Tuesday. It was so fun I went up into their area and met tons of cool people! Wednesday night we had a baptismal interview with a guy named Matt. He is a super cool guy who has had some heart issues and was a federal interrogator. He has been investigating the church for about 20 years now and finally made the decision to be baptized which was super awesome. Then it was Thanksgiving! It was super cool I had two Thanksgivings and ate soooooo much haha but it was a good day I got to go to the turkey bowl the ward was having and played some ultimate Frisbee and football. We had to play ultimate because nobody remembered to bring a football. Then it was Friday which was so awesome. Elder Jarrett got to go to the Philadelphia temple for the last time because he is going home this transfer so I got to go on exchanges with two other elders in Philadelphia. Which was sooo fun! It was cool to talk to the people on the subway and on the street. We passed this guy that was just straight up rolling a joint on the subway haha it was awesome! You definitely don't see that kind of stuff in Smyrna Delaware. Haha after that nothing else really happened.

It has been a pretty good two weeks with a few ups and downs but I'm excited to see what transfers bring. This first transfer was really hard but really worth it. I learned a lot about missionary work and about my testimony. Thanks for everyone's support! Love you!

-Elder Dorrance