January 23, 2017

Sorry, life has been busy lately so I barely have time to write my emails, so I've been slacking on little spiritual thoughts. I'll try harder...

As you guys may have read, his area has been sloooww. No progressing investigators in at least 2 months or baptisms in a year. It's pretty unmotivating. At the beginning of the week not much happened. All the up until Friday when we felt we should go tracting in this one area. It was probably the most unreceptive neighborhood here. So ya, we were not super pumped. But here's the important thing about all this, keep going. That's something we can all learn. A lot of us have heard that Heavenly Father has something in store for us so we just have to get through the hardships and take them well and he will give them to us.

Next day is Saturday. Just dumping rain (you'll read more about it). We didn't want to go out and bike in the rain, especially since the week has been so slow anyways. But alas, we did. We were blessed with the most successful day this area has seen in a long long time. You'll read about it in the Saturday section. It was awesome, and we got rides almost everywhere because people just kept taking us places. It was awesome! 

As long as we

"...press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end..." (2 Nephi 31:20)

We will be able to receive all Heavenly Father has in store for us, even if it means biking through a hurricane to get there.

Even Alma after being persecuted left the city and pretty much gave up on them. But then he was told to go back. Instead of second guessing it or ignoring it he went straight back.

 "Now it came to pass that after Alma had received his message from the angel of the Lord he returned speedily" (Alma 8:18)

Tuesday:

We were driving home from the stake center 45 minutes away with the other Elders when they realized they forgot the keys to their house and wallet, so we turned around. By the time we got back there was no one there and the building was locked up. We both had dinner appointments we were going to run late to. So we were kinda toast. We walked around and I saw a key box with a code. So I tinkered with it and clicked in a code, 23479...it opened! Pretty sick huh? I got that number because that's what the code at the Roswell building used to be before they changed it. So I thought it was worth a shot. It's crazy I even remembered that code or that it worked there too. I wasn't even supposed to know that code, but I heard it five months ago, and remembered it. 

Wednesday:

So today I went on exchange with an elder from Brazil, he being black. We were walking and this car pulls up and stops in the middle of the road with these two black guys in it. 

"Aye! Y'all Mormons?"

"Yeah!"

"When'd Mormons start letting black guys join into their church?"

"Always"

"Not until 1960"

"No we've always let black people join"

"Oh, is it your v day?"

"P day?"

"No V day"

 "The day we have a break? That's p day"

"Ya, do y'all get a break cuz it's Martin Luther king day?"

"Uhh no...that was two days ago"

"Oh. Alright, that's cool man"

*car pulls up behind

"Alright see ya later man!"

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

So it was dumping rain all morning and afternoon. We thought that maybe we should just call former investigators and whatnot since we only had one confirmed-ish appointment. So we prayed about it. Afterwards, in Elder Knight's words, he said, "The spirit was like, 'Yeah you already know you're gonna go work.'" So we did. Well in the span of the day we got 5 lessons with investigators. Some of which with people we'd just met. We started talking to one person in this random trailer about the restoration and as we introduced the Book of Mormon she said, "Oh I have that book! Some girls came by a few weeks ago and shared that with me!" Another guy who we didn't have a completely confirmed appointment with we stopped by and he was sitting in his garage reading the Book of Mormon. Another lesson we went to that was confirmed was with a new investigator we got my second day here. He'd been reading and said he knows it's true and it's brought him much peace. He wants to keep learning and reading more so he can feel more of that. Another lesson we went to was unconfirmed, we had an inactive atheist member who loves the missionaries drive us there and he said he wanted to come in, so that was awesome too! We got more success lesson-wise in one day than I have in the past three weeks combined. Pretty exciting!

Sunday:

Today the heavens opened up and gave us not a shower of blessings, but a torrential downpour of rain. It rained all day. We were biking today and it was coming in so hard and so fast that we could only see half a second in front of us due to the fact that we couldn't open our eyes. And that's especially scary when there's no bike lanes and we're in the road, I kid you not, cars coming within a foot at 50 mph (I don't know why they put us on bike in this place, pray for me). The rain was on and off. It always stopped within a minute of getting in a house and started up again within 5 minutes of being back out. It rained so dang hard that it started flooding in 15 minutes.