Playing Racquetball

This last week, went pretty good,  However a little slow as far as investigators go.  We've had a hard time recently maintaining our investigator pool.  So right now, once again were kind of in a finding stage.

On Fri/sat. we had several service projects planned that we did.  On Friday we helped one of the members clean up some of the trash in his yard so that he could mow the lawn.  But before we started, while we were waiting for bro. Cruz to get ready, one of his sons has a guitar, so he let me play it for a few minutes.  However, this was the first time that I have played a guitar probably since I was in Raleigh, and I couldn't hardly any song.  I had to give it a few tries to play "sweet home alabama", and I couldn't for the life of me figure out the song by Boston that we used to play all the time (I don't remember the name of it) [Peace of Mind].  It was somewhat embarrassing since I had claimed to have played the guitar for so many years, and then could hardly play anything.

Then Saturday morning we went over to another members house to help him with some yard work.  And then in the evening we went to go help a part member family with some work that they said that they needed to get done, but once we got there and changed clothes, we found out that they didn't need the help after all, but we did get to eat some pretty good food at their house. 

This last weds./thurs.  I our district leader went on exchanges with me to our area,  and elder lake went with his companion.  The exchange went pretty good.  We had an awesome contact with someone during the exchange.  We saw her outside her house, she had just gotten home, and her kids were getting out of the car,  so we started talking to her about her kids, and related that back to eternal families.  She then told us that just a few days she was wondering about that, what would happen to our families after this life, and what happens when we die.  So we taught her the plan of salvation.  The amazing thing is that she really didn't have much time, I think that she had to go to work or something, but she allowed us to teach her for a few minutes,  which is amazing.  Because most people could easily make the excuse that they don't have enough time.  But that really showed that she was prepared, and that she was honestly wanted to learn and seek truth.

Convert Receives the Priesthood

How are you doing?  It sounds like everything went well at the wedding.  Thank you for the packages that you sent me.   I got a compliment on one of the ties already, so good choice.  I didn't know that you were going to put the pix of me wearing the tie up at the reception, hijoles, if I would have known that I would have taken a better pix.

I told you last week, but this week was transfers, but they didn't effect me or elder lake.  

We have been teaching a family, well, part of a family.  It's the mom and her daughter, were hoping to start teaching the dad, but we haven't been able to get him to sit in on any of the lessons.  The mom hasn't been able to read in the Book of Mormon because she can't read the words on the page, so we ordered her a copy of the Book of Mormon in large print so that she could read it.  She was pretty excited to have that copy of the Book of Mormon, and has started to read in it, so that's a good sign.  They were supposed to come to church yesterday, buy I'm not sure what happened.  We talked to them the day before and they said that they were planning on it, but they didn't show up.  We called them at about 9 05 (church starts at 9) to see where they were at.  we got a hold of the husband and he said that they thought that it started at 10, so we thought that they were just going to end up showing up late.  But they never did show up, so we'll have to see what happened there.

This last week [new convert], the person that we baptized recently received the priesthood as well as his friend will, who was his friendshipper that had been less active, but reactivated when we began to teach [new convert]..

It's kind of a short letter this week, but I just can't think of anything to write,  But I'm really enjoying my mission a lot.  And I've learned/am learning a lot, and I'm grateful for how my mission has "opened my eyes" and made me really understand and internalize why were her on this earth.

Rainstorm and Pictures

Did you ever get in contact with that person you were going to do FHE with? 

• We did, but we dropped them.  There were two different people that were going to come,  both of them told us that they didn't have enough time right now.  But it was really intersting what happened with one of them.  Because she has read part of the book of mormon, and prayed about us, and has told us that she felt the spirit testify to her that is is true.  So it was kind of dissapointing when she said that she didn't have time for it.  But as we talked with her, we testified about the restored gospel of Jesus Chris, and reminded her about the answer that she had received from the spirit.  But as we talked to her about that you could see in the expressions on her face that the spirit was reprendiendola [scolded] because she had a smile on her face at the beginning and then you could see her face get real serious as we talked to her and we knew that she didn't feel comfortable at that point in time and that she knew that she really does need to continue preparing for baptism.  But I'm quite certain that maybe she's not ready right now, but probably in the future, she will be ready.

This week was a pretty busy week...well every week is busy, but it wasn't your tipical week in the mission field.  On weds. we called one of the members to see if he could come on exchanges with us.  But we found out that his mother in law (who had already been bedridden...is that how you say it, when they can't really get out of their bed to do very much.  But anyway she's been that way for about a year.)  But we found out when we called this member that she wasn't doing very well, and it was very likely that she might die.  He invited us over to come visit with them, which we did.  then the next day, we found out that she had passed away that morning, they invited us to come over again, so we wen't over to visit with them for a while.  Then the funeral was on sunday,  so we spent most of the day after church doing things for the funeral.

I sent a pix of a rainstorm that we got caught in.  Which isn't an uncommon accurance.  We were on our way to a members house to teach them a lesson, and it started raining, so we decided to stop and get out of the rain for a little bit.  Normally I just ride through the rain storm,  but I decided this time, that the members wouldn't want us in their house if we were wet, and if we're knocking doors, it's really difficult, because nobody wants to let you in.  So we stopped there for a while and thats where I took the pix.  I'm not sure if the pix serves it justice, but it was raining really hard.

This week is transfers, but nothing is happening with us.  I'm staying here.

 

El Guapo Sapo

Waiting out the Rain

Still....Waiting out the Rain

North Carolina Rain

 

Wet Potholes

On Friday we had a really awesome surprise.  We were supposed to eat dinner with the verdin family, however they live about 40 miles away from us, and it was the end of the month and we only had 50 miles left to last us to the end of the month, and we still had two 25 mile trips out to magnolia.  So we figured that we were just going to have to bike it out to magnolia a couple of times.  But about an hour before we were supposed to go, a member called us up and said that he was headed over to the members house, and asked if he could pick us up and bring us there!  That was one of those tender mercies of the lord.

I was a week that makes for some pretty good stories.  Here in wallace there are a lot of interesting people that you meet, and this week was no exception to that.  On Saturday we were in magnolia riding our bikes and there was a guy that called out to us, so we stopped by to see who it was.  It was an older guy with his wife (We were out in th boonies/fields) and the have a little piece of property and it looks like they just live out in the woods with their truck.  But we started to try and talk to him, but we soon found out that he wasn't all the way there,  first of all because we could smell beer on his breath.  But I've talked to many drunk people on my mission and there had to have been something more going on with him than just being drunk, I think all the drugs that he had done in his life had pretty much fried his brain.  So he started talking to elder lake and said to him " hey man have you ever been hungry man?"  and elder lake said "yea".  Then this guy started going of on him saying, "then man if you've been hungry man how do you spell hungry man, man tell me how to spell hungry man!"  (he went on like that for about a minute, then elder lake said H-U-N-G-R-Y.  Then they guy said " ok man well if you've ever been hungry man than you've probably been angry before man.  Because when you're hungry you're angry man because you're not happy man...(and once again he went on for another minute or two on that)."  At that point elder lake just about couldn't hold it and and started laughing, but finally he spelled angry and we gave the guy a card and rode off.

It was pretty exciting on Saturday also, in the evening we went to a trailer park to teach a lesson,  and in this trailer park, the roads are horriblisimos.  They aren't just a little bumpy, some of the bumps literally drop down 3-4 feet.  So when it rained some huge puddles were made.  So it was the end of the night, and we had already been soaked and we got to a puddle that covered the entire road, so there was no escaping it.  So elder lake, who was in front of me, stopped, turned around, got some space to get some speed, and hit the puddle head on in the biggest/deepest part of the puddle.  I'm going to attatch a pix that we took at the end of the night.

This week has kind of been a struggle to teach our investigators.  We always have a lot of appointments set up every day, but not a lot of them go through.  So there's not anything too exciting happening with any of our investigators.

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