Hello one and all again! Happy excuse-to-pinch-your-forgetful-friend-day! I'm doing good (rocking my four-leaf clover tie! Thanks again Bowens!) And it is transfer time here in LA. We are going to have an interesting one for sure these 6 weeks. Elder Watts is leaving the area and I am staying and am being Jr comp to yet another district leader. Well, we think he is district leader at least. His name is Elder Richerson apparently but we know just how well they got my comp right last time. They told me I was getting a Chinese speaker and I got a Texan that doesn't speak even a lick of Spanish, ha ha. Our current district leader, Elder Parsons, is being bumped up to a zone leader. Anyone who knows him is pretty shocked for 1 of 2 reasons. 1). He's only been DL for a transfer (6 weeks) and 2). He's him. Not to say he's a bad missionary but he has definitely seen his share of the other side of things before the mission.
But enough about that, only missionaries seem to like transfer news so I'll get to the good stuff. Tuesday was a cool day because of an awesome new idea we've been trying. We've been instructed to pray for specific things and I guess it was time to take that a step further. With prayerful consideration we were asked to plan for daily miracles to happen at specific times. We planned for ours to happen at 3 that day but we had no set appointments or people to even visit really. So at 3:12 when we were walking around trying to talk to people this guy shouts out of his Tahoe "Have you eaten yet?" Expecting it to be some dumb joke we walked up the car and told them we hadn't, and to our surprise they said they would take us out to lunch.As we went to get into the car the man and his wife explained they were from the Filipino ward in Arcadia and were on a lunch break from work. They just saw us and decided to include us too, so they took us to a Filipino and we talked and it was awesome. They also gave us a referral for a friend so that was really cool.
Wednesday we a cool lesson with a part-member family and it far exceeded our expectations. We plan usually a family home evening type idea for this because most of them really already know the church and we're just trying to get them to keep coming so they can be baptized. While we were teaching a friend of their daughter showed up, named Crystal. She's in her 20's and is looking for a church to go to, so we abandoned the lesson and told her about ours. How did it go you ask? Well we spent 4 hours at the visitor's center with her, so you tell me! Oh, and she accepted to be baptized as well. The Lord works miracles if we just work like we're supposed to.
That night we were out bringing in some trash cans for Sis. Pumphry and we saw an old man trying to do the same across the street. I went and asked if we can help and the man asked if I was going to talk to him about The Book of Mormon or not. I was a bit surprised when he invited us in after that and we ended up doing a question and answer session with him and his roommate. Turns out the old man's family are all LDS and they went less-active when he was 5 so he never got baptized. His roommate had a ton of good questions and we left him with some pamphlets and our phone number. If you talk with everyone, God will give you people to talk to.
Thursday we had yet another miracle. We have a goal of everyday speaking to 20 new people everyday, whether it be on the street, a referral or tracting. We got around to 7:00 at night and had a grand total of 0 for the day. But with some faith we went out to get our 20. I'm not sure if you've ever tried to have 20 meaningful conversations in an hour, but it's every hard to do. That being said we actually managed to do it! It was insane, we were finishing one contact and moving straight to the next. And then we had groups start coming up to us, so we talked to all them as well! It was cool to see the hand of the Lord at work.
I'm gonna take a bit of time now to answers some questions I've been getting from home, so if you have any, just let me know because I want to start doing this from now on.
Can you baptize a girl who used to be a guy or vise versa?
A: Yes, you can but they have to be repentant and go back to whatever they were before. It goes back to the family proclamation to the world where it says "gender is an important part of our identity".
What's up dawg?
A: Not your spelling grade I see
When are you going to Brazil?
A: Ask my mom, she has the tracking number. The real answer I guess is when the Lord wants me to, but that never seems to make you guys happy.
Those are all the ones from this week. Hit me up with more if you have em'.
So, my spiritual idea this week comes from Luke 9:62, which reads: And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. That's a bold statement to make but this is Christ talking here. It means that once we get to work, we need to not worry about how much is done or about anything else other than getting the job done. Elder Dube in the last general conference has an awesome talk about this and I suggest you look it up when you get a chance. But for me this kinda took a personal note as I realized how much I "look back". To join the missionary force is to put all other worldly concerns behind you and to become a new person really. I have let thoughts and past habits hold me back I think and I feel like I will be breaking a lot of them these coming weeks.
But how does this apply to the everyday member and not one of us? I think that we can take this in the sense of our sins as well. If we repent and say we're sorry about something, how can we even look back at it? When we decided to repent it is to change our selves permanently. That doesn't mean to disregard your past completely of course. I think Elder Jeffery R. Holland said it best: "The past is to be learned from, not lived in".
Well that's it for this week. Love you all and hope you are doing well! Have a good week
-um no exercito de Deus
Elder Teela
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