 |
| Note from the Editor: Last Thursday evening, I got an email from Sister Lewis with only this picture attached. It made me very happy. I have been telling Nathan how I watch her blog and look for pictures of him and that some time he should just hold up a "Hi Mom" sign. I got this one! :-) |
Dear Family,
This week was probably the hardest week I've had on my mission so far. Nothing terrible, but everything was going so slowly. BLEHG.
The whole week was just one disappointment after another. By the end it was actually getting pretty funny, because it seemed like literally everything was against us. On Tuesday, we had a pretty average day planned out. Some finding, some follow-ups, and an appointment at 6:00 with a lady named Mandy who we had been trying to teach for months. It was about 10:30, and we were about to go in for a lesson with one of our investigators, Jaime. Right before we were about to get out of the car, I got a call asking if we were on our way to the Trainer Trainee meeting in Quincy (over an hour away).
What.
We told him that we hadn't been told anything about it and asked him when it started. "30 minutes ago."
What.
We didn't have time to go back to the apartment or nothin'. We DROVE for our lives. We didn't take our suites or anything, because we didn't have time. We were only going to make the last hour of the meeting as it was. On the way down, we were frantically looking for a text, missed call, or anything that said anything about the meeting, and we didn't have any. We got there with an hour left of the meeting in our regular proselyting clothes. It was pretty embarrassing. Elder Coy always talked about how the phone sometimes doesn't get texts, but now I know that he was telling the truth. And it really messed us up. I don't know if it has anything to do with the geography of the Coulee Dam area, but we really need a new phone. We had to hurry home as fast as TiWi would allow to make it back in time for Mandy's lesson. The GPS was guiding us, and it was dark outside. I started noticing how I didn't recognize any of our surroundings, and when we looked at our GPS, it was taking us clear up to Spokane or something. Piece of junk. We ended up having to travel the long way to Coulee Dam across Pinto Ridge, and then we noticed that we would not make it with the gas we had in the tank. So then we had to drive all around Coulee City for a station. It was while I was standing outside filling up in the rain that Mandy called and cancelled on us. What an experience. So that is the story about how one of my worst missionary fears came true. The other one is drowning in the font, but I think that one is a little bit better.
The rest of the week was full of cancelled appointments. Even Selena cancelled on us! But there is always good with the bad. Because one of our appointments didn't go through, we met an older black man walking home from work. We talked to him for a bit, and he invited us back. His name is Vermont, and he's pretty cool. He used to drive a taxi in Seattle, but moved over here recently to be closer to nature. We met with him yesterday, and we had a great lesson with him about prophets. He, just like everyone else here, is a talker, so it was hard to bring up gospel subjects sometimes. We might have to start role-playing tying random subjects into the gospel in our morning studies. haha. But it shoes how Heavenly Father's timing is way better than ours. We asked to find people to teach, and because an appointment didn't go through, we did!
We did run into one other family that we are excited to teach. They let us in instantly, and for a second, I thought that I was in a members home. It was a young couple with two little kids, and I was honestly looking around for pictures of the Provo Temple or something. It was weird being in a house so normal for once! They are already Christian, so we hope that our lesson with them will go over well.
The other day, we tracted Nespelem. Now I know why missionaries don't go out there very often. We knocked on a few doors, and then talked to this one drunk native guy that warned us about how some people over there put spells on people and worship the devil and all of this other spooky dooky stuff. Not the best place to spend any amount of time.
The highlight of this week was inviting Jaime to be baptized, to which he accepted. He's going to have to stop smoking, which will be hard for him, but we gave him a Spanish Book of Mormon that he can finally read. We went to teach him yesterday, and he had his other Cuban friend over that speaks very broken English. He was crazy. haha. He said that he was the holiest man on earth because he is baptized in the shower everyday. We didn't question that, but we definitely doubted. We also had a worldwide training broadcast by the general authorities on Wednesday, and that was awesome. It really kept us going for the rest of the week and reminded us that we are on the Lords time. This is what stuck out to me: Sometimes I feel like if I'm faithful enough or if I have a strong enough testimony, I can push the Gospel into peoples hearts, but Elder Bednar gave an excellent training on the difference between bringing the gospel unto the heart and into the heart. It takes more faith to realize that we can only bring it unto the heart, and that it is the spirit's job as felt by the investigator to bring it into the heart. It was what I needed.
That was pretty much our week! I feel like I have been tested as a trainer this week, but I have a feeling that this next one will be better. Either way, it's sure to be an adventure! Have a good week!
Elder Moser
 |
| From Sister Lewis' blog: "These are missionaries in our northern parts who are training new missionaries this transfer. The new missionary training lasts 12 weeks. New missionaries are paired with our best Elders and Sisters for this 12 week training. It’s a great honor to be a trainer. These trainers are our best examples and teachers. They set the stage for the next 18 months or 2 years for their trainees." |
 |
| Me and Elder Folkman of Montana |
No comments:
Post a Comment