Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Top of the World


19 January, 2015
          Man, p-days are so annoying.  I spend all week waiting for one day to roll around, and then it passes by so quickly!  Anyways, some cool things that happened tonight: We talked with our recently reactivate member who wants us to teach and baptized her two sons.  When we first met this lady, she was really super closed-off, but we just kept talking to her and being happy to see her and teach her. In time, she realized that we were sincere and then she started changing and listening to us. One of my favorite things that I have learned on my mission is to follow the Spirit and the Spirit will tell you that sometimes it will take a long time to help a person while other times it will be fast.  When we follow the Spirit then the conversion process is sincere, otherwise it is just convincing and manipulating people.  There are quite a few missionaries that opt for the manipulating method, but I don’t like it and I won’t do it.
20 January, 2015
         I went on exchanges with Elder D. and today was really hard, but not is a bad way.  It was hard because every single appointment went at planned which meant that we literally had to run from house to house to keep our appointments.  I am a very fast walker, in fact I have only had 2 companions who could walk faster than me.  But today, even I had to run to keep up.  Elder D. likes to talk a lot and he does not like children.  Whenever a child interrupts the lesson, he gets super serious and tells them off.  We showed up to this less active lady’s house where the grate was closed but the door was open. So the woman was just chillin on the couch watching TV without her shirt, or her bra on.  Fortunately she did have a towel that partially covered her.  We were like, “Hey,….oops…we will just wait for you to put a shirt on.” Awkward, but in the end it turned out to be a good lesson. 
         Anyways, finally we were making some progress with the baptism in our area. We have these two young men 14 and 15 who are amazing.  They are studying the scriptures every day, and living the word of wisdom.  I have never heard or seen kids this young be so interested in the scripture.  We will also be baptizing the two sons of the recently reactivated Mom. 
21 January, 2015
         There is a guy who was listening to us when we were teaching in a very sketchy alleyway.  At first I thought that he was the least likely person there to want to hear our message because he had multiple piercings, big chain necklace, and many tattoos inkling skulls with wings and smoking skulls.  Then he asked us to come teach him.  Well, today we taught him and he has a sincere desire to learn.  Then we visited a bunch of less active members who were not interested in the slightest.  I will be interesting to see who will follow the Spirit.
22 January, 2015
         One cool experience happened today when we passed by a recent converts house we learned that their Mom was very sick.  They kids said that they had no idea what to do and that they were trying to get a hold of us but to no avail.  Then we just showed up and we were able to help them out a ton. Those are some of the things that I love the most about being a missionary.
         On a light note, we made contact with this old guy who has two weiner dogs (a mother dog and her daughter!) The owner said that if he could, he would love to have 200 doxies! 
         Later that day I had one of our investigators asked< “Why do you guys believe in Joseph Smith?”  I bore my testimony about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, and because I know this to be the word of God as confirmed by the Spirit, I also know that Joseph was a prophet.
23 January, 2016
         Okay, our heavily tattooed friend is amazing!  He read everything that we gave him to read and he responded to each and every question at the end of the pamphlets.  This almost never happens and it was really sweet. His cousin was there and he wanted to learn about the Plan of Salvation which wasn’t exactly what we wanted to teach that day, but it turned out fine. Later we had a great lesson on the Proclamation to the World and the Plan of Salvation with E. and N. and ALL of their kids.  They were interested and participated in the lesson.  Sadly, N. still has to heal from her foot surgery so that she can come to church before she can be baptized.
24 January, 2015
         Today just about everything fell apart. We ended up visiting less active members who are sometimes much harder to teach than brand new investigators.
25 January, 2015
         We had three of our investigators come to church today! One of them was late because he was planning to come with a recent convert, but then when he (the investigator) went to the member’s house, the member was sleeping.  But our investigator woke him up so that he could get to church too.
         This week turned out super well and we finished it off by teaching a couple where the man is pretty wacko about the Book of Revelation, signs of the times, and conspiracy theories, and other stuff.  It was interesting, but we tried to focus on the fact that it is more important to be prepared for the second coming that it is to be worries about the details. If we follow Christ we will be ready for that day.  Both of our investigators are very musical and into singing groups so we showed them a Vocal Point video and they were impressed.  The husband said, “Those guys are Mormon too?  I thought it was just you guys walking around with shirts and ties.”
   

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