Woah short letter! Both you and dad were up too late - I hope you got some rest! I was on exchange yesterday in Elizabeth and I forgot to change the time for daylight savings time and then I woke up at what I thought was 6:30 (5:30am) and Elder Hughes and I talked for an hour before we realized the time change. So then we talked for another hour, so that was good. Elizabeth is a really weird city.
So it sounds like your week was busy but somewhat uneventful? We had dinner with the Barnards, (Bishops son) but Brother Barnard had to work so it was just Sister Barnard and all the missionaries. And her mom, I think. She made some cool halloween food. And that family is great. We had to go inside at 6pm on halloween night, so we just gave candy to trick-or-treaters for a couple hours before planning and going to bed. We only had two groups show at our door (it helped to have that sign you sent me a while back) but they were hungry for candy so they absorbed the whole bowl haha. I did a little origami that night too.
It was a very cold week. Yesterday it was probably close to 30 degrees when it got dark. I'm not used to that yet! I have warm stuff I just don't really feel like putting it on. Other annoying part: my hands get really dry in the winter so I always have to use lotion. I have this giant bottle that smells kind of like chocolate because it is cocoa butter. Chocolate hands-
Dad was asking about the people we teach, so I'll give that a mention, starting with investigators. First of all, we have Comfort and Diane. Comfort is from Ghana. This is the woman that Elder Thompson and I found in East Orange about a year ago. She is progressing pretty well. She could be baptized next week, but she likes taking things slow so she accepted December 8th. I think next time we visit we'll try to move it forward. But it is something she wants to do, so that's good! She comes to church every week, and she usually gets there before we do :) Then we have KC. She is from St. Lucia. You already know a little bit about her. It's been tough to visit her regularly, but she keeps all the commitments we leave with her. Except she couldn't come to church whenever we invited her, so we're working on that. She is very smart. She's progressing fairly slow as well. We're still teaching Michael Armand, but we haven't had many opportunities lately to visit because translators keep being busy all the time. His brothers are doing alright. However, I think that overall the family situation has improved a lot. We found a few new investigators this week - Lula and Pedro - who are good finds. Lula is pretty old and has the most funny southern accent ever but she loves the missionaries. She was supposed to come to church yesterday, and she was ready, but didn't get a ride :( While Elder Pabla and Elder Morrill were still on exchange, they found Pedro and taught him the message of the Restoration. He knew a lot about the church, but never had been taught by missionaries before. Other than that, I don't know much about him but we have a return appointment though!
Next, less active members. We happened upon an inactive member named William Lima who had moved from the address on the ward list, but he was happy to have us come over to his new apartment. We've seen him twice now, and one of the big reasons that he isn't coming to church is because he works 6 days a week and hasn't had a sunday off in months. But there's probably another reason he doesn't come, we just don't know it yet. Super nice guy though. I'd be his friend. He's 24 years old. We're also working with Maureen Edwards, who is a long time member of the church. She is an endowed member, but she just barely started coming back to church about 3 months ago. She still doesn't attend weekly, sadly. She's come a long way though! I'm not quite sure what the reason is... but she's been offended before a couple times and though she says those things are behind her, I think she still dwells on them a little bit. She has a strong testimony and a neat conversion story but she makes excuses not to attend church like "the sacrament and church attendance is not the only way to have spiritual growth" but we hit her with a stinger when we explained that the temple is not available to less-active/inactive members. We had a weird lesson that was really powerful, but I might have gotten under her skin a little bit... :/ She wasn't super happy when I told her that we aren't coming to her house to half-heartedly tell her that taking the sacrament is good or a neat thing. It is a commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ! And I think it is a commandment she isn't quite ready to commit to keeping weekly. It's tough teaching people who carry a certain pride that is founded upon the thinking that since we're only 20 years old, we don't quite know what we're talking about or we don't understand peoples situations because we're from Utah. To some degree, that is true. But the basic remedy (the Gospel of Jesus Christ) is the same for every concern and many people don't see that. We closed up that visit with lots of love, so that was good.
So I'll move on. Here's some things I would like for Christmas:
-new pants
-a couple new white shirts (probably 6 - 3 long sleeve and 3 short). I won't be facing any more winters after this so I won't need as many long sleeve things.
-2 shoe stretchers (those wooden things you put in your shoes when you're not wearing them)
- errrrbb erebrbbebrbe I don't know other than that. Size 34/34 levi's 511 grey corduroys (I think that's the right stats)
Well I am about done. I have a cool experiment I am going to try over the next few weeks. It's a pretty big deal if I can do it. It's called a spiritual fast or something like that. It comes from a talk titled, "Purification" by Elder Neal H. Maxwell. Maybe dad has heard of it. I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks for the letter! I hope you do well on your schoolwork and in the yardwork too! Let me know the gender of Caitlin and Nate's kid! And tell dad he needs a new car! haha just kidding don't do that. The truck is grand. I love that thing. I am proud of it too!
I hope to you're alive and awake, too.
Love,
Tab
No comments:
Post a Comment