3/20/17 Meals-on-Wheels, Lamb of God

Elders Johnson and Guerrero

Dear family and friends,

Once again a pretty solid week. 

We were fed by members most of the days this week and were always cooked amazing food. 

On Tuesday we started doing service at this place called Meals-on-Wheels. The Sister Trainer leaders invited us to go there because a lot of the staff speak Spanish and one guy has shown some interest in learning more about our church, so obviously we followed. We talked with this guy named Pedro who is super cool, super open, and super kind. We picked him up as a potential and taught a lesson to him about who we are and what we do. At Meals-on-Wheels we just got a bunch of chicken thighs ready to be cooked. It was pretty easy. We got approximately 490 lbs. of chicken ready for cooking. 


Wednesday I hit the Month mark of being in the field which is a little crazy. Time flies. That day we also had a pretty large time set out to knock doors. We were working on being more bold, loving, and using the Book of Mormon, and it really helped a lot. We were able to teach two lessons off door knocks, which is a miracle in itself. The second lesson was so cool though. This Hispanic family had just moved in and we were waiting for a bus to come so we could make it to our dinner with one of the branch members. We knocked on their door and seemed like no one was home, then we knocked the next house and they pulled up in their car. They looked at us with the, "oh man it's the Mormons/JW's/Fed look" and we walked over and talked with them. Turns out they've met with missionaries before and want us to come back. We taught a little lesson and left to catch our bus. Earlier that day we talked with this guy smoking outside his house. We talked a little about the Bible and scriptures and he invited us in. Super interesting guy with a crazy back story. He told us about how he grew up in a rough foster home and one day in the middle of the night one of the foster kids stabbed him in the chest and cut him open. He showed us the scar. Its big. haha that was fun. We passed him off to the other English elders.

We had a really good zone conference/training. One of the Assistants to the president was leaving and they had a few of the zone leaders give trainings. I'm guessing that was done so the president of the mission could see who might fill the spot the best. I think my favorite training was on Charity. We went over a few scriptures, a few being Moroni 7:43-48, John 3:16, Mathew 25:34-40, and Mathew 22:39, and how they pertain to missionary work. We need to be looking for ways to serve everyone we meet, and use each door knock as an opportunity to teach and help instead of just to knock. Knocking to teach instead of knocking to knock, that's something I need to work on because knocking is not fun. The zone conference went a little long, like 1.5 hours long, which was a little awkward because we had to cancel a lesson with a less active, and showed up late to another.

Friday was fun. We woke up to a little bit of snow and we had a few lessons planned. Our first lesson fell through so we knocked doors into the area and meet this nice black guy who had a crazy deep voice. Turns out he was a JW and spent the time mostly trying to teach us, and he said a few things that were pretty interesting and are provably false. The guy was nice though. We asked him why did he chose to join the Jehovah Witness church, he talked about how to him it fits the bible the best and how the church is the same through out the whole world. He talked about the bible says in what I think is Ephesians 4:5, that there is one lord, one faith, and one baptism, and how that pertains to the JW church. In my head I was thinking about everything he said for his JW church fit for our church as well. It was kind of interesting to me that no one talks about using prayer to find out which church is the church they need to be apart of. Everyone we talk to say it either fits their reading of the bible or fits what they look for. I really like the scripture in Mark 7:19-21. It talks about how what is in the heart of someone that really matters, because the heart is where our actions and desires come from. Everyone we seem to talk to only make reference to thinking out their question and making the best decision off that. Which is good, but it is only the first step. John 1:5 talks about if we lack wisdom we need to ask God who will give us the answers to anything we ask for, that and Moroni 10:5 we know that it's through the Holy Ghost that we receive these answers. 

Friday afternoon was crazy. We, like every week if we don't have a lesson, had indoor soccer again. It was insane. So many people were there. It was also getting really competitive, it was pretty funny. We were doing teams of 4-5 and we had around 5 teams, loser switches at each point. Elder Guerrero and this other guy were so good. We basically dominated the first 8 or so games. I got a few assists, but my ball skills don't match more than half of the people there. We invited a few of our potentials and investigators and we saw someone we've been talking too for a little there as well. Everyone had a good time, and only a few people were angry at the end.

Saturday we went to the lamb of God concert, written by Rob Gardner. IT was so good. The production was put on by one of the local universities as well as a bunch of professional soloists. The orchestra was incredible. It was a little weird because we were instructed that we couldn't go with our missionary tags on, and I didn't think that was going to be as weird as it turned out to be, but the music was fantastic. I realized how much I missed music. The members who brought us were super gracious and bought us dinner and a CD of the lamb of God. We've been rocking out to that for the last few days. 

Each day we are seeing improvement in Spanish, unity as a companionship, in teaching, and our investigators.