Elder E 4.29."Goodbye Elder R"

This is the big week. Elder R goes home in several days. we had a good time together for these past 2 months. He is such a great missionary. But Sunday hit him really hard. It was his last Sunday as a missionary and it was fast and testimony meeting as well so the branch presidency asked if Elder R would be the first to bear his testimony. While he was up at the podium, that's when the reality hit him all at once. He broke down and everyone did as well. After he was done, the members that we met with the most got up and said their goodbyes to him and said what a wonderful job that we had done with the area. I think it was a good way for him to end this life before the next one.
This past week has been pretty dreary. The weather has been rainy the whole time. It looks like it's going to rain anytime now. But the work moves on. We also had exchanges with the district leader and the zone leader last week. I was in E with Elder P and we did some tracting. There was one atheist that tried to bash with us for almost an hour. There was a scripture in the Book of Mormon that continued to rise to my mind as we "conversed" with this man. It's found in 2 Nephi 9:28. There were no heated words, no hatred felt. He just had too many opinions and no willingness to try the true way to find knowledge. After that, we biked to our next appointment. We had a wonderful time with these investigators and answered many of their questions. I hope that there will be some good that will come from them. The next day, we went back to G and helped out at the library. They were doing a huge project where we moved two rooms around. We had so much fun and I'm happy to say that this library is my favorite library in all of Ohio. We were using the little scooty thingys that you put underneath the big objects to move them around. That was a huge blast to use. We made games and activities with them. Lauren and Ruben are our favorite librarians ever! We took pictures and made videos of the whole event. The library looks completely different now then it did before. It was definitely needed. After that we had to go to the church building to help out in a service project. We were laying down some new mulch for the plants and what-not and then had a quick potluck afterwards. There was a non-member there who is interested in learning more but we aren't counting him until we actually teach him. That should be this weekend.
Anyways that's pretty much all I have for now. I wish I had more but I haven't been writing in my journal lately so I can't remember everything now. Hopefully I'll do better this week.
Love you all,
-Elder Ephraim Kade DeCoursey