Email from Week 8

Elder Johns Email from Week 8

Everyone:

 

We have a baptism tentatively scheduled for next week. We will be Meeting with James tomorrow to figure out for sure. He's an awesome guy, and is unrecognizable as an investigator at church, he even participates in Priesthood meeting discussions! (It's funny, the first ward's priesthood meetings have like 10 people there on a good day. Including the missionaries.)  

 

This week has been blessedly cool (relatively). The mornings and evenings have actually been pleasant. Which has been good while we've been out tracting.   

Clarification of the "greenie dinner". It tasted pretty good. The noodles looked like play dough but tasted normal, and the chicken Alfredo tasted like such. It was just dyed green.

 

Both wards are having a combined "Ice Cream Social: Missionary Open House". We will be conducting a tour of the building followed by Ice Cream. We have been working a lot with the wards on getting that set up. We are expecting around 300 people both members and non-members.

 

While we are getting support from the wards (including meals every day) I don't think we have had any serious referrals. That's the best way to do it folks! Tracting and OYMing is not very efficient.  

 

This week I had a scripture in 1 Nephi jump out at me. It said "Have ye inquired of the lord?" I've been thinking about that a lot this week. Especially on questions of "where should we go tract/oym?" or "what should we do with this hour now that our appointment fell through?" It is important to seek his guidance and go with those feelings. We had a good experience with that yesterday. We didn't have any appointments after dinner and our backup person to see fell through. So we prayed to know what to do. "Should we go talk to one of our Less actives or OYM". We were supposed to OYM. Elder Clark suggested "Lets OYM on Baseline" (the main drag in town). I suggested we start on the west side of town so the sun wouldn't be in our eyes. We drove down the street, but we saw very few people on the sidewalk. Once we got to a parking spot on the west side of town Elder Clark decided to have a "training moment". "What should we do now?". I threw out a few suggestions including walking up Victoria Ave but he kept saying "You decide". So we prayed to know and I felt good about walking up Victoria but I wasn't sure if I had received "an answer". But I decided to do so. So we did that and talked with 20 people in about an hour. The area was very much "the 'hood" and we talked to some interesting people, and were heckled a bit by a few guys who were probably drunk. But the good contacts we had overweighed that, and we had a referral for the Spanish speaking elders. It was a great learning experience and a good close to the day.

 

I said before that sometimes I feel in over my head with the situations of the people around me. I still feel that way, but I know and am recognizing how to speak with the spirit to try to help people. Sometimes people use their agency in frustrating ways. That makes me think how heavenly father must feel when we disobey his commandments and make stupid decisions.

 

Oh, I almost forgot about Luis! We were OYMing in an area in west Highland a few weeks ago and this guy called out to us. Excited we walked over and he started talking, and talking, and talking. He talked about his dog, he talked about his family, he talked about how life was short, he talked about life, the universe and everything. However he included some things about God and Jesus Christ. So we told him a bit about who we were and what we did and we set a return appointment. 

That return appointment came, we knocked on his door. But he had some family from Minnasoata (sp) over for a surprise visit. He then started talking about that, and finally we had to cut him off to reschedule. 

We rescheduled for this last week. We showed up, he let us in. We asked him what role religion has had in his life, and he began  talking, and talking and talking. He talked for half an hour straight before we could get a word in edgewise. I swear that man has mastered the art of circular breathing because he never paused! We spent an hour there and said about 20 words total. We found out he wasn't interested in our message though. So we wont be going back.

 

Letters are amazing, please write them. I will reply, I promise.

 

Thank you for your prayers.

 

Elder Bryce Johns