Dear Elder Slavens: GRAND Master

Well everyone... I have news. Remember how I told you I was now a master? Whelp... I've been upgraded to GRAND Master due to my church sandals. So you must all refer to me as Master Elder Slavens when you speak to me now. But you will survive.

How is everyone doing this week?!?!?!? My weeks been kinda crazy. A roller coaster, if you will. But we'll start off with the good.

There was this bug that was flying around in our classroom once when we were trying to focus on learning Cambodian, but no one could concentrate, so I ate it. I just caught it and stuffed it in my mouth. I told everyone that they had to write about it in their emails home today, so I hope they are honoring that. I also learned this week that the Cambodian word for prophet, pyiakaarei, directly translates to "weather Lady". So everyone in Cambodia thinks Thomas S. Monson tells the weather on channel 4.

Also, the egg business has gotten out of control. Last Friday we had almost 76 eggs. We've converted a lot of people to the ways of eating day old eggs.

Someone in our district, Sister Stevens, got really sick this week. She has been having problems with her throat, and so she has missed A LOT of class. It's been really hard!!! But we've all been praying for her!!! That's not the good news, the good news was that she asked Elder Lamborn and I to give her a blessing. It was amazing to see how it helped her. Elder Lamborn gave it since he's never given a blessing before. Everyone in our district loves each other.

The last part of good news was that Elder Lamborn and I got called as the zone leaders! Which means we're in charge of basically everyone going to South East Asia on their missions. It's good, but it stressed me out. Here's where the stress of my week comes in. I thought that maybe I wasn't ready for something like that. I'm just a crazy kid. I eat 80 eggs a day. I run around and yell a lot. I tatted up my back real good with all these temporary tattoos someone had since Halloween. Now I have to be an example to people. So I'm trying my hardest to be a better disciple of Christ! But don't worry... Elder Dark Money isn't turning into a square just yet.

In a TRC lesson (which is teaching real life people once a week who come in and volunteer) this week, we taught a lady named Om Meak, who moved here from Cambodia just recently. And I couldn't understand ONE WORD she said!!! I was laughing the whole lesson!!! I loved it, but MAN do I have work to do to learn this dang language!!!

My hardest part of the week but also where I learned the most was just last night. I was struggling with my new calling (even though it's basically nothing) and that I wasn't good enough. And that's when I realized the power of repentance. We had a lesson where we learned that repentance wasn't only for gaining forgiveness on giant sins, but on constantly improving who you are. So I prayed for help and instantly felt Heavenly Fathers love. So if anyone of you are struggling with ANYTHING, go ahead and pray about it! And if you don't know how to pray, or what repentance is, than that is what missionaries like me are for! They won't bite! I might...

I love you guys!!! But I'm mad that I got a notice that everyone is marking my emails as spam. So I love most of you. Have a EGGscelent week, everybody!!! ROCK ON

Master Elder Slavens

PS Tell everyone that spams my emails that they are dead to me. I got a notification that everyone is spamming it. Whatever. Haters gonna hate.