fam,
What a week, its like it keeps on getting better. Today hits 3 months in the field and I'm past 4 months total. Crazy. Time just flies.
I know I've been pretty bad at actually sending pics, I'll work on it this week. Probably.
As expected Elder Waters is my new companion. I picked him up from the other apartment in the district last Monday. He's about my height, from Oregon, has almost a year under his belt and is a really good missionary.
This week we had a few really good lessons. German is doing well. He is on date for baptism for the 27th. I think he can do it. We talked about his testimony and he really has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon. He has been having some troubles with "evil presences" that make him feel really bad and scared. We've been working on this, and it's definitely something interesting. We followed up with him on the Word of Wisdom and he hasn't smoked since. He cut that habit cold turkey, the power of the priesthood is real. When we first asked how he's been doing on that commandments he responded by saying "I've been really struggling..(looks down).. I just am really trying to cut back on soda." We may have hit the avoiding unhealthy things a little too hard, the Word of Wisdom is all about staying healthy. When German mentioned he was struggling with soda I could see Elder Waters smiling. I knew exactly what he was thinking. Look up something along the lines of "we invite they commit we follow up - law of chastity German" and you'll see. It's from the district and is pretty funny.
The Agelars are doing well. We aren't quite sure what they need. We had a really awesome lesson planned where this one member family was going to come and share their conversion story and what made them want to be baptized into the church. They canceled! We had a lesson and we just talked about what they need, what they know, and what we can do better to help them out with. It was a good lesson but not half of what it could have been. The language barrier is real. Luckily my Spanglish is real. In that same lesson I learned a new word, eskypiar which means to Skype, spanglish as heck haha.
The last week we had a few weird lessons.
The first one was with one person we've meet with twice. We knocked on his door and there was nothing. We knocked again and he opened the door and said hold on then closed the door and disappeared for a minute. His son then walked around back and we were invited through the back door and had a lesson in his basement. It was pretty sketchy and we asked him if he had his BoM. He went up stairs to grab it. Elder Waters turned to me and was like "do you always have lessons down here?" For some reason he didn't want us upstairs like normal. Elder Waters asked for my leatherman that was in my bag "in case something [was] about to go down." Nothing happened. We're still alive haha.
The second was with this lady who just got home from the hospital and was way drugged up. This was off a door knock and her husband didn't want to talk to us but said his wife would. We shared a really good restoration based lesson with her, but she was going out of town the next day for a few weeks so we didn't exactly pick her up as an investigator. That was such a weird lesson. We asked her if she wanted us to come back because she obviously was way out of it on the pain meds she was taking. It was a great lesson. She said she felt something good and peaceful about what we said.
Last and certainly not least. We knocked into this guy and he opens the door and lunges at Elder Waters who just stood and didn't flinch. The guy had a steak knife and did a fake lunge towards Elder Waters' stomach. He backed off and smiled and we kind of stood in silence for a few seconds. I had my hand on my knife thinking what the heck just happened, what are we going to do, how do you even come back from what just happened. Turns out the guy was really nice, he invited us in and I was pretty hesitant to that, but after discreetly moving my knife to front pocket in hand status we walked in. Bol is from Sudan and is in his twenties and really curious. We mostly talked. We covered so much with him because he had such good questions. After we walked out of his house I kind of realized how awesome missionary work is. It's so fun.
Almost forgot. Mothers day we got to skype home. When we pulled into the place where we were going to skype Elder Waters and I were talking about out ice cream cravings. After skyping with the fam we walked to the car. I forgot my planner so we walked back in and as we were walking out again one of the family was like "hey do you guys like mint chip icecream?" I was like "who doesn't??" and they gave us a bunch of ice cream. Sometimes God answers the prayers we don't even ask.
Lastly on our way home that same day I felt like we needed to stop by a member who was struggling and hasn't been to church in a few weeks. It was a near perfect way to end the night. We knocked on his door and I realized we had no idea what we were about to do. Someone else invited us in and he came out we we visited with him. Without going into specifics there's something that is making him feel "unworthy" of going to church. We talked about a really good analogy of an eclipse. The moon is so small compared to the sun, but every once in a while the moon will eclipse the sun. The sun is still there, but this tiny thing has made it seem like the sun is gone. We still have our testimonies and beliefs in what was good, we just let a question, doubt, concern, or fear become so big we loose sight to all the things we no for certain. We then talked about Enos 1 in the Book of Mormon and read a few verses. It was such a nice lesson. We read verse two of Enos and I asked him if he was willing to fight through this. Totally lead by the spirit, it was such a good lesson. He said the closing prayer and it was so sincere and nice.
Missionary work is good work.
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