Well this week went alright. Last Monday night we went out to dinner with the first counselor and his family and it was really good. They are a funny family! They have a 17 year old son and a 19 or 20 year old daughter. Their son M and I had a lot of the same interests so we talked for a little while while Elder T talked to Brother B. After dinner we were on our way to see a recent convert that was kind of going downhill but we got a call from Sister J (whose home we live in) and she asked if we could go to the Loma Linda hospital and give a blessing to an older lady that had recently been sent there. We turned around and went over to Loma Linda which is actually not part of our mission but part of the Redlands mission. It was a really good experience. I didn’t give the blessing but Elder T said I have to give the next one. After that it was time to head back to the house so we went and planned for the next day.
Tuesday was kinda extremely boring. We had new missionary orientation from 9-4 and it was terribbleee. It was pretty much everything I’d already learned on my own while being out here. Anyways after that we went back to our area and decided to go see the recent convert that’s been struggling since we hadn’t been able to the day before. We got there and he wasn’t home but most of the rest of his family was. We talked to his mom who is less active for about an hour and a half and tried to show her the importance of going to church and she said she didn’t want to make her son think she was just going to try to make him go. We told her that that shouldn’t stop her from getting the blessings of going to church and that if she just told him that it’s his choice if he wants to go but that she is going with or without him that it wouldn’t be a problem. She said she did want to go to church so she said she would go on Sunday... she didn’t, but her son came! It was really good. We hadn’t really had a chance to meet him yet and it was a little nerve racking because I guess with the other missionaries he hasn’t been too friendly or nice to them but he was way nice to me and every time he saw me he would come over and shake my hand and say hi so I guess either the other elders were crazy or what. After our visit with his mom we went to dinner at a member’s house (the members here are awesome about feeding us. We have had 2 days that no one fed us dinner and the calendar for the rest of the month and most of October is full.) They were a really cute family. They had a four year old girl and an 18 month old girl and they were just way cute! They were both showing off for us and just being really funny. The dad was extremely quiet and the mom was really chatty and nice. We had a good conversation and left with a scripture thought about being an example to those who aren’t our religion. We left and decided to try to contact a kid who we tried every day for the first week to get a hold of and we finally caught him at home. He is a recent convert and is super awesome. Apparently he had been out of town at his dads and had been going to the ward over there. We talked to him about possibly serving a mission and he said its definitely been on his mind but he is trying to decide between that and going into the military. We just told him all the greatness that comes from serving a mission and that he should pray about it. That’s all we really had time for that day.
Wednesday we got to go serve at the Bishop storehouse. I’m not sure if I told you that we did that last week? But yeah they have the big warehouse here so we went and did service there. It was mostly getting food into orders that people wanted so that they could ship it out to them. We do that every Wednesday from about 9 - 1 and the next two weeks we will be going Wednesday and Thursdays because the people in charge are going to be gone. After bishop storehouse we had an appointment with 9 year old S who is getting ready to be baptized. We just talked about different commandments. Her mom is a less active member and the rest of the family is non members. Now today was definitely interesting after this point. We decided to go OYMing (open your mouth) at a bus stop. We talked to a few people and one lady seemed extremely interested. We started out by giving her a pass along card and then she kept being interested so we gave her a restoration pamphlet and she KEPT being interested and we ended up actually giving her a Book of Mormon! She was really appreciative and said she would start reading it with her husband and if she had any questions she would call us. We haven’t gotten a call yet... but we keep hoping that she will sometime. Her bus came and she got on and left and these two black guys got off the bus and came over and one of them was like "PRAISE JESUS! How ya doin’ brothers? Did ya’ll know that there’s more than one Jesus?" We looked at each other and I said "nope that’s news to me." So he whips out this tiny bible and shows some scripture that if you twisted it ALOT it might make sense. But really it was pretty ridiculous. We talked to these guys for 45 minutes and every time they thought something about our church was wrong we found somewhere in the scriptures that showed we weren’t wrong but they weren’t listening much they basically just said "all you have to do is rely on the Bible and on Jesus. No other books or prophets or nothin." We had to leave though so we thanked him for the talk and told him had to go and he was pretty chill about it. Oh also the two guys were high as can be. hahaha It was really funny. We then went back to the house where a member brought us some food. We ate it and just relaxed for a while then decided to go to a less active family. They were home and listened to our message about why church is important and said they had been thinking about going to church this week. (Which they didn’t) They just have struggles. Their son died a few years ago and the father had a stroke sometime in the past and is partly paralyzed including speech so all he can say is yes, no and sheesh. It went pretty well but like I said they ended up not coming to church. After we decided to go to a bus stop again and this is where the night gets pretty interesting. We park and walk through the parking lot when we see this guy taking a picture of this lady at her old beat up van so as we pass we look in to see what he’s taking a picture of and what do you know. There’s a donkey in the back of the van! We talked to the lady for about 10 minutes and found out for the last 11 years she has been "saving donkeys" or "beasts of burden as the scriptures call them" and how she has saved 15 in the last 11 years. From where I’m not so sure.... I don’t tend to see donkeys just wandering down the streets anywhere. But anyways of course being missionaries we start talking about Jesus and she says "yeah me and Jesus are on a good note with each other. I’ve only done one thing bad in my life anyways." and I’m thinking wow! Only one thing!? She’s doing awesome! Way better than me at least! And she says after a pause. "Yeah I killed a guy." unexpected? Yes very much so. She continued. "Yeah like 6 weeks ago... I think he was trying to rob me and so I hit him and he fell and his head went sllleeechhtt" so yeah... if you see an old van with a donkey in the back and a crazy looking lady driving watch out she’s a killer! hahah It was quite the unexpected story!
Thursday was pretty boring especially after the day before. The only thing really awesome that happened was that while we were tracting we knocked on a door and a lady answered, looked at us, and said "shoot you found me." She let us in and we found out she used to be a member but since she moved into her house ten years ago she hasn’t been to church at all. She struggles with smoking so she feels guilty and all when she does go to church but we had a really good visit with her. She gave us cake and water and we asked if she had anybody that she knew that might be interested in what we have to teach and she said that her friend might! We are now going to go back to her house this Friday to teach her friend and she said if we can get her friend to go to church she will 100% for sure go back with her friend! So hopefully all goes well. I know we didn’t end up there by accident. That’s really all that happened on Thursday worth mentioning.
Friday we got to teach a guy we tracted into a couple weeks earlier. He is a single dad with two kids. An 11 year old boy and an 8 year old girl and they mean the world to him. You can tell how much he loves his kids when you’re around them. We taught him about how the gospel blesses families and gave personal experiences about the blessings we have gotten from the gospel. He said he is really looking around for a church that can teach his kids how to grow up and be good people and he loves how the Mormons are all so nice and like a big family. We gave him a Book of Mormon and told him to read 3 Nephi 11 and pray to know if the BofM is true and if what we taught is true... Next time we teach him we asked if it would be alright if the kids joined us so they could learn to and he was all for the idea! He seems golden and I hope that we can help him to understand why it’s so important to be a member of the church and come closer to Christ.
Saturday morning we had an appointment at 9 with a couple that the girlfriend has already said she wants to be baptized but the boyfriend wasn’t sure. He doubted his faith. But we went and had a good lesson on faith and he said he has had a lot of trials in the last week and he has seen that his faith has grown. I asked him if he wanted to be baptized and he said YES! He just said he wants to pray about it first to know if it really is the right thing to do. the only problem is that they aren’t really financially stable and they need to get married before they can get baptized for some reason but they can’t get the $75 they need to get married so once that gets worked out everything should fall into place. The rest of Saturday was really pretty disappointing and I was a little bit down but I made it through the rest of the day.
Well now it’s Pday and hopefully it goes pretty good. We are going to go to a member’s house in the ward later to practice piano and write our letters. Well I love you all lots! Also I’m not sure if you heard about the story with Travis but it’s really cool! If you haven’t heard ask grandma! And only Devon lives in my mission.. Everyone else is in the Redlands mission. And about BYU getting beat.. yeah we were at the house and the J’s were watching it so we could hear what was going on... it was brutal.
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