Disappointing Family Home Evening

Are you guys getting hit with some of this East Coast heat that we are hearing about?

 

• Yea, it's been pretty hot recently (up towards the upper 90's/100), but it hasn't effected us too badly, we've managed to be able to use the car and get inside teaching lessons, so it hasn't been to bad.

 

How did your family home evening go last week?  Sounds like you had great plans.

 

• Not quite how we planned it.  We had talked to the investigator three days in a row (fri, sat and sunday) and every day she said that she was going to come, but on monday, the member called her to see if she was ready to pick her up, and she said that she had to leave for  "mandato", or something like that I'm not sure what.  Then there was another investigator that was supposed to come.  We had one of the members call her and invite her to come to the FHE and she said she would, then we stopped by her house on our way to make sure that she was coming so that the member could pick her up.  She told us yes, and that she was supposed to go over to the members house to ride over with them in a few minutes (the member lives across the street).  So we wen't to the FHE and found out that that member that she said that she was riding with was already there, so we called her, and she told us that she had left and couldn't come...just 20 minutes after telling us that she was coming!!  So we got there late, because we were running about 15 min behind, and then we had to rummage around to try to find somebody that could come, so we ended up being 30 min late.  So when we got there, the members were mad at us because we were late and didn't have any investigators there, and she had cooked a ton of food.  We ate dinner with them and taught a lesson, and tried to make the best out of it that we could, but it was still a pretty disapointing night.

 

 How are things going?  

 

• Great

 

 Do you need anything?

 

• nope...pix from sharee's wedding!!! (electronic copies are great, but us missionaries like to have hard copies of pix).

 

 Did you ever get your bike adjusted? 

 

• I brought it in and they looked at it and told me that repacking the bearings wouldn't really do anything.  He said it wasnt the bearings that are wearing down (as in the balls)  but what the balls roll on,  so he told me that if he were me that he would just ride it out for now (because it isn't too bad,  I just wanted to fix it now before it caused a bigger problem) and later on I'll need to get new hubs.

 

This week we had a training on tuesday, and then I went on exchanges to wilminton after the training until weds. evening.  IT was interesting, we taught a family from china.  It was weird though because I heard them speaking chinese, and since I've been speaking spanish, my brain tried to pick up what they were saying, but since I don't know chinese I didn't pick up any of it.  I don't know if that makes any sence, it's kind of something you have to experience.

 

As far as food goes, we did really good this week.  We ate with members 7 times this week, which made my stomach happy, and we got try and get referrals from them.

 

On Thursday evening we went to teach a family, but the parents weren't there...well, they were asleep and didn't want to wake up.  But their son was there, and he agreed to let us teach him.  We had to teach him outside, because we can't be alone with him inside the house.  But we taught him the plan of salvation, because he had some questions about that.  The leson wen't really well, and it suprised me how well he remembered everything that we taught him.

Video of Missionaries singing "God Be With You Till We Meet Again" at conclusion of Spanish Conference in Knightdale, NC - see Jeff on the back left.

how are you doing?

I just sent you a few pix from the Spanish missionary activity that we had this weekend.  on Thursday night we drove with the zone leaders to the mission home in Raleigh and stayed the night there.  Sis. Cotterral had cooked some soup for us, so we ate that (our second dinner that night),  and then we went to bed.  The next morning we got up and went to the temple in apex.  We did a session in the temple, and we did it in Spanish.  I was surprised at how easy it was to understand.  It is really basic and simple Spanish.  Then we ate lunch had some training/discussion/testimony meeting and then headed back to our areas.  However with traffic, by the time we got back to our area, it was already 7 o clock and just had enough time to go to a dinner appointment.

We had a pretty good week this past week.  I really enjoyed the Spanish activity, but it did take away a lot of proselyting time, but that's alright.  I learned a lot of things that should help us out.

Tuesday was pretty crazy this week.  Tuesdays are usually days that you spend tracting for hours on end, because everybody's at work.  But we were really busy, we taught four really good lessons, between traveling and teaching the lessons, that's all we did that day.  We found this guy a while back, and in the contact with him, we invited him to read the book of Mormon, to pray about it and then to be baptized if he came to know that it's true.  When we taught him, he told us of an amazing story of this dream that he had telling him that it is true.  We set a baptismal date with him for the 13 of august.  But now were not to sure, because we talked to a few members that know him and we're not sure if he is quite capable of making the decision to be baptized. But we'll see how it goes.

There was a family that we were teaching.  I think I told you about them,  but we decided to drop them.  They weren't will to give up the church that they are at right now.  they told us that they had made a promise that they wouldn't leave the church that they are at right now.  and their son plays the guitar in the church band (I've always thought that the church bands are kind of interesting, because they are breaking the sabbath day at church by listening to rock music in the church!)

Tonight we have an exiting night planned.  Two of the families in the branch are going to have a family home evening, and invite a few of our investigators.  So we're going to eat dinner, have a lesson, and let the investigators get to know a few members.

Sister Cotterell fixed soup for the missionaries

Conference of Spanish speaking missionaries

Picture of Companion

Picture is of Elder Dixon before he (Dixon) was transferred.

How are you doing? So it wasn't too long ago since I last wrote you, but there's a few things I could tell you about.

We finally got back up with [investigator] (the boy thats 12 yrs old and his parents didn't want to give him permission) but it looks like they might end up giving him permission. So were going to work on teaching him again. But he's going to honduras for three weeks, so we'll have to wait for that.

I think I told you about the family we found last tuesday, the Rivera family. We taught them again this week, and it went pretty good. the mom had read in the book of mormon and prayed about it, but she told us that she hadn't recieved an answer telling her if it is true or not yet. We're kind of wondering if they're going to be willing to give up the church that they are at. When we invited them to come to church they told us that when they began going to the churhc that they are at now that they were anointed and promised that they would stay at that church and not go to any other church. But Elder Lake asked them that if they found out if our church was the only true church if they would join it. that sentence doesn't make sence, we'll try it in spanish. El les pregunto si ellos llegaran a saber que nuestra iglesia es la unica iglesa si se juntarian con nuestra iglesia. and they said that they would. so we'll see how it goes.

So I told you that me and elder Lake have been speaking just spanish together, and we are still doing it. We've gone two weeks now. I feel like I've gotten a lot better at spanish these last few weeks. I could speek just fine about the gospel, or teach lessons, but I talked a little bit slower whenever I tried to carry on a normal daily conversation (I could do it but I had to think), but now it's starting to come a lot more smothley.

This last week we also got up with a potential that we contacted about a week and a half ago. it was origionally the daughter that we first contacted, but the parents were there and listened when we taught them. it was a really good lesson. the parents didn't quite understand everything, but the daughter seemed to absorb everything, and give some really good answers.

In our mission since near the beginning of our mission, pres. Coterral has always encouraged us to try to extend a baptismal invitation in the first lesson. it always requires an extra effort to get that invitation out, but recently he's been hinting on us extending invitations to be baptized in the contact. Me and elder Lake decided to give that a try and we ended up inviting 16 people to be baptized this week (where we normally only invite about 5-7) but we saw a lot of good things come of it. it was amazing seeing the number of people that actually said yes, and that have already started to fulfill commitments.