Hello hello hello one and all! It's been an other week of fun and blessings in the CLAM (California Las Angeles Mission) and I can't wait to tell you all about it!
So starting with last P-day we went to a place called The Alley. It's basically an open air market where you go if you want the spirit to turn tail and book it. It wasn't all that great and we were stuck there forever. I realize things there are cheap to buy and all but it's really not worth it to me. The one highlight was meeting "Tony the tie guy". He is a small Mexican man who loves missionaries because, well...... they buy his ties a lot lol. He even cuts the price down for us for everything in the shop. Ties and belts are just $3 a piece He brought all 12 of us out some sodas even! He's pretty great overall but he isn't too interested in our message sadly.
After that we taught Fran, a small older sister who is investigating the church. She's really funny, she takes notes at all our lessons and truely hungers after the word of the God and loves scriptures. She's been coming to church for a while but has missed the last two weeks sadly. We taught her The Plan of Salvation and she just ate it up. We extended a baptismal invation but she's not too sure yet. One of her sons is LDS and the other isn't and she feels like she would be showing favoritism for joining the church. Not you typical problem, eh? She's praying about it though and we think she'll come around.
Tuesday we met a real character though, Brother Spencer. He and his family are..... interesting. He is a lot like my Uncle Brian and say a lot of "not exactly doctrine stuff. You know, things that haven't been said by a prophet or revealed but make sense in the perspective of things. His wife, son and his girlfriend live with him. They are more or less active but could use some strengthening. We also had dinner with them the next night and had a lot of funny stories told to us. Apparently he almost died trying to fill up a glass 5 gallon water container early in their marriage It cut the major artery in his arm and he almost bled out. Guess what his wife had to say about all this? "Honey, you're getting blood all over the ambulance". She denies it though :).
The next day we visited Allen again and brought Brother Mackley (the ward mission leader) with us. He was kind enough and let us in again and we all sat down and talked a little. I shared a spiritual thought about something or another and the spirit came down pretty hard. We thought the lesson went well enough and we hope he comes to church again soon.
After that we visited Doug, a high school chemistry teacher. He's a very intelligent man and we brought out the big guns for this one. We brought in Bishop Parker, a lawyer and great man. They had a really good discussion and we eventually made our way around to the subject of religion of course. He said that all his ancestors from the time of the reformation down to his grandfather were Lutheran Ministers and he felt kinda bad about breaking that line. That being said he didn't feel compelled to stay with that church. He sounds a lot like Joseph Smith almost. He says that he respects a lot of religions for what they do and believe but that he hasn't found one that he knows is true. I got pretty excited and we gave him a powerful lesson. He didn't come to church this week but we know he felt the spirit that night.
Friday I went on splits with the ZL's, specifically Elder Kpainey. He was born in Africa but moved here when he was 7 so he has a bit of an accent but has a ton of power in teaching because of how simply he testifies. We had some really awesome experiences We where biking around and looking for dinner when we stopped at a traffic light. Another man on a bike asked us if we were Mormons and we told him yes. He said he wanted to join the church! He just had some friends who had told him it was a great church and that he should join so he asked us where the building was and we gave him a Restoration and a Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet. And then another man cam out of the Del Taco behind us and basically said the same thing! I was blown away by the whole experience After all that the next morning we had a PPI and he said he was excited to see the missionary I will become. I was humbled to hear such praise from someone who himself is so great.
Saturday we un-split and went and did service by the seashore for the PD and school for a violence awareness or whatever thing. We helped set up and decorate for about an hour and then broke it down afterward. It was cool cause we met one of our investigators there and they gave us some dinner when we thought we would be left to our own cooking (always a scary prospect lol). We also stopped by said beach and got some awesome sunset pictures! I forgot my card this week so those will have to wait a while.
Yesterday was great and kinda sad as well. We were happy to report the highest number of lessons taught in a week ever to our ward, 17! That was great and we were all happy that the work was going so great. We then went and sang in the choir with Nina, who is still progressing toward baptism amazingly. We sang that Sunday and it went pretty well. We kinda botched the high climax or the piece in this minor chord but other than that it was great. Then we went over to have pancakes with the Featherstones again but we had to dash to lesson before we could actually eat too much.
We had dinner with the Dahls not too long after though and they are an amazing family! It consists of the two parents (about 40) and their 3 kids: a son in 5th grade, a daughter in 3rd I thing and a son in 1st. They are all in Ti-kwon-do and we talked a lot about martial arts and I told them a bit about Jiu-Jitsu. Brother Dahl played rugby as well and we talked about that a lot and then I found out sister Dahl is a Music major! So pretty much I LOVED this family. They were so great and we shared a message about how God loves us not matter what we do.
That pretty much wraps up my week. I hope the Lord blesses you all and I can't wait to get back to work. I will send more next week!
Ficam doce!
-Um no excerito de Deus
Elder Teela
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