The temple trip was amazing. The day started off kind of ominous. It was raining, so we took our umbrellas to go to the gym, but the doors were locked because the only way to the gym is through the pool area. It eventually let up by the time we headed over to our ride's house so I didn't bring my umbrella, but that was a mistake. Halfway there, the rain starts dumping on us again, and when we get to the temple it is still raining super hard, so my suit got absolutely soaked. But once we got in the temple and got changed and everything, the temple was very peaceful of course. We don't wear our name tags in the temple, by the way. We did an endowment session, and this time it was so much easier to understand and get things out of it. Part of it was just that I noticed all the various things that people have pointed out to me, but it was also just that it wasn't such a busy day compared to the last time. The entire Corona Zone went to the 12 o'clock session, except for the Sisters who went to the next one. Elders and Sisters aren't supposed to be in the same session apparently, just one of those mission rules. On the way home we stopped at a place called Cafe Rio's, which is apparently huge in Utah, I'd never had it before, but it was pretty good. I did get to take a couple of pictures at the temple on the way out, but there wasn't much time so I'll try to get more next time.
TiWi's. . . They're definitely interesting. They're just a little black box that attaches to the wind shield and they have a voice that tells you to check your speed, or that you were driving too aggressively if you hit a bump or something. If you're speeding, you have a 6 second "Repentence" period to get your speed back down, otherwise it gets recorded as a driving offense. Apparently at the end of the transfer President and Elder Puskas will get a driving report that rates you as a Green, Yellow, or Red driver and that can lead to penalties for your area like losing a car for a while. That might sound awful, but it really hasn't talked at us much, it's just told us to check our speed a couple of times while we're going down a hill and not paying attention to our speed as well as we should be. But they're apparently very effective, they reduce driving offenses by 95%, so it's probably a good thing, just something to adjust to. You have to log in with your TiWi card every morning when you get in the car and log out at the end of the day.
Opportunities to share my testimony were sort of hard to come by. This week was just jam-packed full of non-proselyting activities. We had the temple on Tuesday, our normal district meetings on Wednesday, weekly planning on Thursday(which takes most of the day), TiWi conferences in Riverside on Friday, and then Saturday we had exchanges.
That reminds me, Saturday we went on exchanges with some of the Spanish missionaries and it was super fun! I was with Elder Ferrin in Prado View, while Elder Camper went with Elder Cressman in their Spanish Area. That morning we did service for the Tolman's and we got to help them tear apart their patio which was pretty fun. We also patched up some parts of the patio that had been eaten away, and then painted. She made us personal pizzas to go and another member had told us we could go pick up some peach cobbler if we wanted it, so lunch that day was amazing. After that we taught Eddy, we read through the testimony of Joseph Smith in the front of the Book of Mormon with him. He said he wanted to come to church, but his mom ended up taking him out of town again. We need to talk with her about coming to church because he wants to come but he never knows his schedule. Our dinner that night was a lot of fun, and Elder Ferrin gave the dinner message in Spanish because they had served their missions in Spanish areas. Then we did some walking and talking, and during that Elder Ferrin told me his life story which took a surprisingly long time. We exchanged back that night around 9:30 and headed back to our apartment.
So while we are always supposed to testify while we teach, it wasn't like we had a lot of good solid teaching opportunities to share our testimonies. Normally we will end a lesson with our testimony of a specific topic or something, especially with our dinner messages, but just sharing it like you would in a testimony meeting happens less often.
See you soon,
Elder Cornaby
"Get on your knees and pray, then get on your feet and work." -Gordon B. Hinckley