Yes that is true. I learned it today. Once again, we had an incredible beach pday playing volleyball. I chose to not wear sunscreen thinking that my tan had me well protected already, and I was very wrong. Everything hurts hahaha. I may never be the same man again. My shirt was on the whole time without rolled up sleeves or anything (like a good missionary because there were sisters there) and somehow my shoulders and back are burned to crap. The sun was incredibly powerful we can just say. I don't really know how the UV spectrum works when it tells you that number on the weather app, but I'm pretty sure today must have been like UV 1000 because I am so defeated right now. I will be recovering for at least the entire week I think.
This was a good week indeed. We had zone conference to start things off with the 3 countries here in the north which is always epic. Love seeing all my buddies. I also got root beer which was sick. I miss that stuff so much. The root beer flavor packets just don't do it justice. Also at zone conference we received our new shoku elder Gallagher. We are now happily living the trio life making fun of each other and stuff.
ACCOMPLISHMENT: we finished constructing our bean bag this week after an entire transfer of trying to gather materials and put it together and not waste work hours. It is incredible. We need some more stuffing actually but we will hold out on that for a little while. I've spent a little longer than I probably should've on that bean bag these last few days since we finished it. Pictures included of course.
We also spent a grand total of 12 hours or so working inside the completed product of our previous greenhouse service projects. It is fully operational and we did 12 hours of weeding. I thought our garden was big growing up but man I miss our garden right now. There is no end in sight. 12 of us going at it for 4 hours completes only 6 rows and I'm pretty sure there's like 45. Pray for us and also my sunburns while you're at it.
We started our temple prep class this week too and it was awesome! It is so cool to be teaching that class. I'm very excited for these guys to be able to go to Rome. More of them showed up than I expected to be honest which is great! We get to do this for the next 6 weeks or so and it'll be an awesome journey.
Now it is time for the deep thought of the week. Elder Skene and I had a really good conversation about what friendship really is on the way to zone conference. It was prompted by some talk we had to listen to that only briefly talked about it, but it stemmed a thought provoking powwow session. Anyways, the talk said that true friendship is based off of compassion and respect. That is such an awesome concept. There is nothing in that description that has anything remotely to do with getting gain or profiting from the relationship. It is solely a relationship built on showing these two things to someone. We then went on to discuss how these two things are what really determines if a friendship or relationship is genuine or not as well. When you can just continue to give real compassion and respect in every interaction with this person, that person is going to feel incredibly and genuinely loved and appreciated. As a consequence, they will feel inspired by their compassion and respect for you for being such a good friend, and they will do the same back to you, creating this cycle of exponentially growing love. However, we discussed also that for some reason, often times it is hardest to show these simple two things with the people we are already closest with. There are quite a few possible reasons for this, but one that we discussed was the fact that there is a difference between natural behavior and genuine behavior. Being genuine takes some sacrifice and a great deal of effort some times, which is far from our natural fallen preference. It takes consistent effort and adjustment to continue showing this genuine compassion and respect to the people we care about which can sometimes lead us to fizzle out in our genuinity after a while with those people we are around often. We fall into our natural habits and stop being completely genuine in that sense. So, the obvious solution is that we must change our human nature. We must force ourselves to put in that extra genuine effort so often, that our natural habit becomes that genuinity. It's a lofty goal, but certainly changing our nature is a big reason we came here to Earth in the first place.
Anyways, those of you who were able to follow that likely scattered thought process get Jacob points. Remind me to give you an extra hug when I get home. That is your reward.
Have a great week everyone! I love you all!
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