This week has been interesting. It’s flown by despite the challenges that presented themselves to us. Monday was quite fun. It started with us having preparation day. Instead of proselyting after 6 (see Missionary Handbook) we had a combined zone activity with the Canoga Park zone. We had pizza followed by watching Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration (2005). If that sounded like a carbon copy of last year for Halloween, I’m glad somebody was paying attention! Tuesday was once again weekly planning. We thankfully finished it with not too much time left over. I always fear that it will take too much time, but it was okay. Afterwards we taught a lesson to a less active guy and did knockout early so we could have dinner early so we could go tech a bunch of appointments. Sadly a lot of those fell flat. Wednesdays we do service at this weird Hispanic church. We gave out food to the homeless people that come for a sermon and then get food afterwards. On Wednesday I got a flat tire. After patching it with Elder Smith’s patch kit, we took it out for a spin and found out that his patch kit was a piece of junk. We were on foot until Friday when we managed to get a good patch kit and a second inner-tube. Wednesday was ward visits, which our ward does to try to get more home teaching done. On Thursday we had an awesome zone training meeting about having the faith to reap. Elder Smith and I did a musical number of Because I Have Been Given Much. Afterwards we had Knockout and went to a lesson with an investigator. He wasn’t home and after having been reminded of the fact that we needed to “open your mouths” (see Doctrine and Covenants) we did so and ended up having a bash for nearly 2 hours before it was time to go home and get something to eat before nightly planning. Ugh! Friday after getting the bike repaired we set out to work. We made a lot of visits which was of no success. Saturday was a bit of the same story. Church on Sunday was fantastic. It was fast Sunday. We had an awesome lesson in Elders Quorum on home teaching based on Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s recent talk in General Conference (see http://gc.lds.org). Throughout the day I thought I was experiencing some sort of fasting like pains, but my biggest fears came as this morning I awoke to what I thought the pains actually were–a cold.