Back to Work After the Hurricane

Did you get to go and do anything for the holiday, or is it pretty much a normal P-Day? 

• No we didn't do anything special, but for preparation day I did take probably the biggest nap of my mission.  We didn't have enough energy to play racquetball this week, so we took a nap for about three hours instead.

Sounds like it was quite an experience during the storm Irene.  Are all the missionaries back to their areas?

• Yea, everyone's back in their areas now. almost everyone was back to their area by Sunday morning for church.

Have you been able to teach [Investigator]?

• Yea, [investigator] is doing awesome.  I didn't think at first that he would be able to learn very quick, but we've taught him the restoration and a few commandments (reading/praying/Sabbath day, etc.)  but he is absorbing it like a sponge.  On Saturday we invited him to pray about the book of Mormon.  which he did.  On Sunday when he came to church. he told us that he had received an answer that it was true, and then asked us if there was a way that he could share his testimony/experience with every one.  And it worked out perfectly that it was fast and testimony meeting yesterday, so he got up in sacrament meeting and shared his testimony.  I tried to translate his testimony, but I don't know if he knew that I was going to translate for him, so he told the whole story and then sat down, so I tried to translate it as best I could, but it was a little hard remembering everything he said.  He has a baptismal date for the 24Th of September, and I'm quite positive that he'll be ready by then.  The only disappointing thing is that that is one week after transfers, so there's about a 99.9999 percent chance that I won't be here for it.  But that's alright, the important thing is that he gets baptized.

How are you doing?  Have you had to help with clean up from the Hurricane?

• Not too much, we helped a member clean up some branches from their yard.  but that was about all we did.  most everything was cleaned up by Monday or Tuesday.

How is the work going?

• Good, it's been kind of slow recently, but it's starting to pick up a little bit.  We've had a hard time finding people recently.  But we're teaching [investigator] now, and it looks like he has a friend of his that we might start teaching soon, and there's a few other potential investigators.

We taught someone this last week, it was an old investigator.  We taught her two lessons, and they were both pretty intense lessons.  She's about 80 years old and has been protestant all of her life, and she has told us that all of her family is either protestant or baptist, and there are like 6 pastors in her family.  So this is going to bee a tough nut to crack.  The first lesson we taught her, we taught the restoration,  and she already knows about the apostasy, she explained the apostasy in greater depth than I've ever heard it. but then she started saying how we all serve one god, and we are all trying to serve god, it's just that we have a different way of doing it, but no matter which way you do it we'll all get to the same place.  This is an idea that I've heard so many times, in fact probably multiple times every day, and it is sooo false!  But we explained the restoration to her and the need for her to be baptized by proper authority.  She said that she would pray about it and then if  she came to know that it is true that she would be baptized.  It was really neat, because we really saw her being humbled throughout the lesson.

So on Sunday we taught this person again, but I'm not sure what happened, maybe it was that she went to church and talked to her family, because it was like she went back to square one after the huge change she made in the last lesson (which was the night before).  So we pretty much had a repeat of the first lesson, and she once again committed to pray about the book of Mormon and that if she found out that it was true that she would be baptized.