Well its Wednesday and it’s our pday! I forgot to tell you last week that our pday was going to be Wednesday because we went to the temple! We just got back about an hour ago. It was such a great experience and so peaceful. I love being able to go in the in the House of the Lord and it’s such a great blessing we have to have such an out of world place to go when we just need to be away. It’s amazing how everything is just so much better as soon as you step on the grounds. The Spirit is quite an amazing blessing. The only bad part was that I had to drive because we couldn’t get a member ride and it is about an hour and a half drive so that was no fun. It was definitely worth it though and I got lots of good pictures.
This last week was once again somewhat of a not so good one. We had to drive to V 4 times in the week and that took up a lot of our time. The first time was to take our car in to get repaired because we hit a piece of a tire on I 15 and it tore up our bumper so we had to have it repaired which took 5 days. The bad part was that the APs weren’t going to give us a replacement car for those few days so we just wouldn’t have a car and our area is WAY too big to do on bike and with the members schedules there was no way we could depend on them for rides places. Luckily our Zone leaders have a small area so they loaned us their car. The next day we went down for a zone meeting where the zone leaders just talked and taught us a little bit about how we can improve our missionary work and talked about the "little things" we can do to improve our missionary work such as just being obedient and waking up at 6:30 and actually going out and knocking on doors and trying to find people to teach. The other time we went down to drop off our roommates so they could go with somebody else down to R for his greenie meeting. Well we took them down at 8 and were supposed to pick them up at 3. Kind of a waste of gas to go down and back and down and back again. So we went to our zone leaders and did a thing where I went with Elder M and Elder N went with Elder B and we dropped them off to try and see somebody and then they were going to tract and we went to go see somebody else. They ended up not even living there anymore but the guy that answered said we could come in and share a message with him. Turns out he is from Hawaii and is aunt, uncle, and mom are all members of the church! He wants to get baptized but just has some challenges to overcome. Then we wait at the zone leader’s apartment for the others to get back up here but they didn’t get back until almost 5 so by the time it was all done we just were out of time to do anything.
The last time we went was on my birthday and it was for President interviews. We just had a good talk and talked about how we can help others around us and how we can be more effective at finding because I told him that is what we were having a hard time with. Not a whole lot of new information but it was good to sit down with President. In his interview with Elder N he asked him if he felt ready to take over the area which means that I probably will be leaving the 31st which is what I’ve expected and I’m ready for. The rest of my birthday consisted of going out to see our investigator D in H and we played some card games, went out to the B’s, the less active lady we are working with and her daughter we are working on getting baptized, and had dinner and played games, then went to the H’s and had smores and J shot off some fireworks! It was a really good day. I definitely missed the family a lot though. Oh I also used some birthday money and bought a new soccer ball because my old one.... died. hahaha the one I bought wasn’t too expensive but it’s a nice ball. I loveeedd the presents you sent! I really liked the ties a lot! Who picked out the crazy blue, red, and green one? I’m guessing Michelle? It’s also way nicer to wear my shoes now that they have insoles that don’t fold up all weird. I really enjoyed the cards from everyone and the food (:
We had quite the miracle on Thursday. I got a call from Brother S, a less active I have worked with since I was with Elder H, who smokes and doesn’t want to come to church until he quits called and we were just talking and I was seeing how he was doing and he just said "oh yeah.. I’m coming to church on Sunday." I was just shocked. And the best part is... HE REALLY CAME! It was so great! He is a way funny guy and during priesthood they asked him to introduce himself (that’s how long he’s been away from the church) and he did and said "you'll be seeing me lots more often. Thanks for having me. And thanks to you guys (points at us and gives us a big thumbs up) for being diligent in working with me to get to church. It was sooo awesome. It was nice also for the fact that the ward got to see that yes we are out working. We only had 1 investigator at church sadly but we sure had a lot of less actives and that in my eyes is just as good.
Monday since it wasn’t Pday we went out to try to see a referral who was a 14 year old girl who was curious about who we were because her dad works in our apartment complex and she saw us come in and out a lot for a couple days. So we went over and she let us in and it was her, her little sister, her sister’s friend and then her best friend. At first they didn’t seem all that interested except for her but it really broke the ice when we walked in they had a song up on the tv that had been playing off their xbox and it was a rock band I listen to and so without thinking I just said "escape the fate... that’s a pretty good band." and immediately she was like "no way! You guys are cool!" and they realized that "Mormons aren’t weird!" hahahaha oh boy. But we ended up teaching them all and they all were pretty into it by the end and all want to keep learning and the 14 year old wants us to next time teach her brother and her boyfriend because she thinks they will really liked our message! It was way awesome! They wanted us to come back the next day too but we wanted to give them some time to read the Book of Mormon so we are going back tomorrow. We don’t really have anybody to close to baptism but we have a lot of people that are getting there. This week already has started out to be pretty good so we just have to keep it up.
The message we really hit on this week to try and share with members and less actives was repentance and its funny because I used to be kind of nervous to share this message because I didn’t want people to get offended but I’ve realized as I’ve gone on with my mission how great of a blessing repentance is and it’s not something we should be scared to share about because it’s no secret that EVERYBODY makes mistakes. We really do need to apply the atonement more than we do in our lives. I came up with an analogy for applying the atonement and I’m going to share it with you.
Imagine that you work super hard and save up your money to buy a gift for your brother, sister, mom, dad, son, or daughter. You are so excited and happy that you were able to get them this great gift and you had worked so hard and given up so much to give it to them. They open the gift and say "oh that’s great; thank you." they put it off to the side and they don’t use it. How would you feel? They have this gift that you gave them and they just don’t use it... it’s like the atonement. Our Savior paid the price of our sins and gave us the gift of being able to repent. It shows our gratitude as we apply the atonement and use the gift that He so willingly gave us.
It’s hard to type the analogy but I hope you get it and it makes sense. It worked pretty well with a few people and they really seemed to take it to heart. Well I hope you guys all have a great week! I love you a ton and hope everything is going good. Thank you again for all the birthday gifts!
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