Week 24

Hey there everyone! It's been a good enough week out here (as always) but I'll start with the big news first. Transfers are here! I'll be getting my ninth companion tomorrow, staying in this area, with Elder Wald. He's a Chinese speaking Elder which will be fun because everyone speaks Korean here, ha ha. That also means that he probably hasn't ridden a bike in a while so we'll be going a bit slower but that is okay, I look forward to working with him.

 

Anyway, this week started off pretty good on Tuesday when we had a bit of a hit list to do. There a lot of people we needed to contact so we spent most the day ridding around to different addresses. We went to go find one member who had dropped of the map and when we got to his address we found a big house there with a brand new gate. It looked pretty missionary proof but we waited a bit and were rewarded with a funny little Korean man in poofy shorts checking if he was home. God must have really wanted us to get in there. We found out that he was home and that he was actually not supposed to be there and was home early. We were actually running late and if we had been there the time we planned to be we would have missed him. Coincidence? I think not. We had a great meeting with him and he actually was at church this Sunday, so a job well done there.

 

The next day was kind of wasted due to some unfortunate mishaps. We visited Anthony, a blind less active man, and shared some talks with him from general conference. He likes to joke around a lot so we actually started by playing for him a J. Golden Kimble talk. If you have never heard him I would recommend looking into it for a good laugh. He's known as the "Swearing Seventy" for good reason. He tends to tell a lot of funny stories as well. Anyway Anthony loved the talk and then we actually shared "Safety for the Soul" by Jefferey R. Holland, an amazing talk about the Book of Mormon.

 

After that we spent the night waiting "ten minutes" til the Sister who was feeding us dinner got home. It took her about an hour and a half really,  but we were able to get a bit of yard work done in that time so it wasn't a complete waste. We had a good dinner and then turned in for the night.

 

The next day was pretty interesting. We spent it at sister Pumphry's home for lunch and then dashed to our next appointment with a less active, Sister R. She is a great woman who tends to waiver in her commitment every now and a again but not that we've gotten in with her we'll make sure that never happens. We had a joint lesson with the senior couple in the ward, The Hurley's, and it went great, especially since we got a dinner out of it. They taught about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon and I bore some testimony of it and spirit was strong. She said she really felt the need to read again and that she would try to every day from now on.

 

We ran by and picked up dinner from some members after that and then went to the church to hurry and eat it before correlation. The problem was that the gate to the church was locked and we didn't have a key. I assumed a manly pose and told Elder Phelps to wait for a second outside the gate. It's a bit hard to explain but basically it is a two story parking garage with a gate on the bottom entrances, but there was a foreseeable way to climb to the second level. Mustering all of the 0 ninja training I had I climbed over and let me ol' comp in. It was pretty funny to see his reaction to it all. We got through just fine but then the church itself was locked! So we figured we could eat outside and wait for everyone to show up for correlation.

 

After an hour no one had still shown up though. What we didn't know is that it had actually been canceled and that our phone hadn't been receiving texts for the last 3 days. So we called on Elder Parsons (who is DL now btw) and Perez for answers. They told us they would come get us since the meeting was canceled. As we put our bikes on the rack to go home I forgot to take off my helmet. It did stay on till about the last 100 yards of the journey though. A man told us once we had parked that it had fallen off and as we ran to get it some guy ran it over! Good thing we had a spare, but it doesn't fit quite right. We had dinner with them and called it a night after that.

 

The next day we met with Cookie, a new investigator we met about 2 weeks ago. But before we got the meeting, as we were locking up our bikes, two police men pulled up. I was wondering if he had locked up on an illegal sign of some sort but turns out one of them was LDS too. They told us to be careful around these parts and that we could get mugged. Poor man didn't know the area I just transferred from I guess, ha ha. Plus we have the Lord's protection on our side. We took his advise though, we got in and out pretty fast .

 

When we got in the Cookie she immediately took us around and introduced us to the management of the apartment complex and then a tour. She was very bubbly and up-beat the entire time and seemed a bit like a strange cookie (ha ha, you see what I did there?). We sat down in a community room for the meeting and were not at all prepared for what was about to come next. She requested us to read the creation story in Genesis and we accepted but convinced her to read the one in Moses instead. She was okay with that and as we began reading she started going a bit off the deep end. She takes her beliefs from a whole lot of other religions and kind of mashes them together you see. She does believe that Jesus is her savoir and that the Godhead are three beings so that was good. From there out though it was just weird. She had all these ideas and acronyms and all sorts of weird stuff, but she loved our lesson and wants to be baptized. We think it's not a matter of accepting the truth, it's a matter of realizing it's the only truth for her.  

 

We had a cool dinner the next day. We ate it with a part member family that is unmarried actually, and that's only where the beginning is. It's the S/W family and it's quite a nut to crack. The father is the member and 1). Plays softball every Sunday 2). Doesn't want to marry the woman he is living with because he made some promise to his last wife and 3). Sister Solis is his in-home caretaker. They have a daughter too, Jenifer who is 28. They are plenty nice and all but it's crazy. I figure I'll just have to be very bold and loving with them. The mother wants to be baptized but needs to be married first.... it's a mess really as you can see. It was a good dinner though and a sweet spirit dwells in that home.

 

To close up I want to talk a little about faith. As I am now at my 6 month mark I've been thinking a lot about it. In the Book of Mormon we learn that Nephi the son of Nephi during the time of Christ's coming to America converted literally the entire Laminite nation to the gospel. All of them. It says this was done because of their faith as well. I was a bit saddened by this. Obviously I don't think I have the faith of a prophet yet, but wasn't my faith enough to bring at least a few more people to God? I felt like I needed to study it out and so I did. I've found a few things in the process.

 

God does give us the abilities to work miracles. He had given His priesthood to use on this earth for all to be blessed and that power does work wonders at times. But God is a God of order and someone who wants us to become all that we can. To let us work miracles all the time wouldn't really make us grow more would it? He wants us to use the gifts we've been given of him to work "ordinary miracles" as I now call them. Miracles that happen more because you were there at the right time, in the right place and acted in the right way. Not some grand moving of mountains or parting of seas. This way we build our faith in Him and perform the miracles that need to be done.

 

So to accomplish these miracles what do we need to do? We need to realize the gifts we have been given of God, we need to heed his voice and be worthy of his spirit. We may not always FEEL like we've just performed a miracle but we will know that we did what God would do if he were there at that time. We can take confidence in the fact that we acted righteously in his name.

 

I love you all and hope you have a great week.

 

- Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela