That's right, 2011 is year and that means its my consecrated year. For the whole year of 2011 I will be serving as a missionary. So it should be a pretty great year right?
Anyway everything is going pretty great here. We had a great start to our 2011 year with... Our first Baptism!! Yep, Fausta was able to get baptized yesterday and it was a pretty great experience. Elder Harrington and I are both so happy for her! She'll be confirmed next Sunday.
Also good news... A few weeks ago we set a baptismal date with our investigator Freddy who's from Peru, and lives with some members. We set it for January 9th but I didn't feel like he was all too sure about it. But yesterday Hermano Cielo (The ward mission leader who baptized Fausta) told us that Freddy was saying he was getting baptized next week and that he's inviting his parents from Pennsylvania. That was pretty surprising to me. We just have a problem. We haven't taught Freddy enough for him to be ready to be baptized on Saturday. We have only really taught him the first 2 lessons and we still have much more ahead, although he does talk about the gospel to the members he lives with. So we'll see if we can have him baptized this week or not, who knows?
Anyway, me and Elder Harrington have been seeing some pretty good success. We have found some new investigators and talked to some good people. Our problem is, is that we don't have very many progressing investigators. It's been harder setting up good return appointments with people. I think I told you about Patricio, who I thought had good potential, well, he's not too interested which is pretty unfortunate.
We got hit with some pretty crazy snow the day after Christmas, and driving on it was pretty crazy during that day. At the end of the night we were having a hard time getting up some of the major hills to get back to our house. Luckily we made it, but then we couldn't get the car back out of our apartment complex. So Elder Harrington and I decided to walk over to one of the main hills to help push cars. We walked and asked different people if they needed help pushing their car or shoveling, and people just said no. People didn't really want help. The walk out in the snow was pretty crazy. It was so cold, and I had like ice building up on my eyelashes. It was pretty brutal, but definitely an adventure.
On Christmas night we went to the branch president's home and had a really delicious dinner, and they gave us all ties which was way nice of them. We left them with a message of how we could improve the branch by focusing more on the Book of Mormon, and what I mean to say that the zone leaders left them with a message, cause Elder Harrington and I didn't do much. But yeah, it wasn't too bad of a Christmas night. Holidays don't feel too much like Holidays on the mission, which is sometimes a good thing, but sometimes a bad thing, just depends.
So last Wednesday we went to this interesting place called Newton. It was a lot different than Dover and there weren't quite so many Hispanics. We mainly went though because we had a referral from some of the Elders there. We were walking around doing some knocking and then the other Elders happened to drive by. We followed them to the referral and then went to knock it. We tried the first door which we thought it was, but to no avail. We decided to knock on the second door and a guy came and answered. We talked to him for a little bit, and then he said he needed to go grab his book. He came back, and it was a Book of Mormon. He was the referral. So we taught him the first lesson on his front porch and when we talked about the first vision, he indicated that he had a feeling or goosebumps on his arm or something, which is pretty good to hear for sure. It got sorta frustrating trying to teach him though, because I would ask him a question and then he would look at Elder Harrington for clarification of what I just asked. I was wondering what was wrong with what I said, I thought I asked the question in Spanish pretty clearly, but I guess maybe it's my accent or something. I'm not sure, but I have a lot to learn. We have a return appointment with him (Ider from Ecuador) on Tuesday, so we'll see where that goes as well.
Most of our lessons this week with members and less-actives have been focused on making goals for this new year, and how others can come closer to Christ and be better people. We asked them to pray to find their weaknesses (we usually used Ether 12:27 with this lesson) and then make goals to improve.
There is so much knowledge I still need to obtain, because when the ward mission leader goes out with us, he teaches with so much clarity and power, and just makes so much sense. He had been speaking the language for his whole life, but still. I have a lot to learn about doctrines, and teaching with power and clarity. The Spanish is coming but eh... I'm going to start doing more notecards to learn vocabulary because I haven't been really good about doing flash cards while I've been on my mission. I guess it will be like memorizing physiology terms.
Oh yeah, one more thing. So last night we ran out of plans and we didn't really know what to do. We turned on a random road because we needed to say a prayer to figure it all out. We decided to just knock on that road, we each picked 2 houses to knock. The first one we went to was pretty special. We knocked and a girl answered, then her spouse came to the door to handle it. It was this really cool guy with long dred-locks. He invited us in to the front part of his house and was really friendly with us. He asked us how long our missions were, where we're from, how we like Utah, and some other things. Then he invited us to sit down and he saw the Book of Mormon in my hands. He asked what it was, thinking it was a bible, and we explained what the Book of Mormon was.
He seemed somewhat interested, but then he stopped us because he had a question. He said he made a new years resolution to come closer unto God and that he is going to read the bible every day. Of course we were happy to hear this, but he also asked us how to pray. He wasn't sure if he was doing it right, but we taught him and I don't think he had been doing it too differently. He said that we could come by any time after he's done working, which unfortunately is really late, but he was saying that he doesn't really want to get into the politics of church, and really just wants to come closer to God. He just wants people to come over and read the bible with him and help him learn from it, which isn't the best thing ever, but I think the English Elders can work with it. (Yeah, this guy was English, so unfortunately we can't teach him).
But then he asked if we had any material to give him in English. We walked out to the car and he came with us. We gave him the restoration packet, and he asked us what kind of bible we used. We told him King James, and he said that's the one he reads on his phone, but he doesn't have a hard copy of it. We looked through our supply box, (and I had seen this bible in the bottom earlier in the week when I was going to attempt to organize it) but right there at the bottom was a King James version of the Holy Bible (In English of all things). We gave it to him and it was like the Bible was meant just for him.
We'll see if the other Elders can make some progress with him, but he was a pretty great guy. He told us that he envied us for having grown up in homes with the Gospel, and told us that if we didn't know it, there is a lot of people that respect us and really looked up to us, and he told us that he really looks up to us. Really good guy, and it was a great finding experience.
The highlights for these past two weeks were the Temple and the Baptism. The Manhattan temple is really beautiful and it was weird going from the streets and then entering in there. It was so silent, and while I was in the changing room, I felt like it was a silence that I hadn't heard in awhile, if that makes sense. But it was a really great experience, and the subways and trains weren't so bad to get there, just kind of expensive, but the day we went to Manhattan was a pretty great day.
The Gospel is true! The Lord will comfort us when we stand in need of comfort! This Christmas week we talked about the importance of remembering Christs life in our lives, and not just during the Christmas season, but everyday. I know that we can carry some of that joyful Christmas season spirit with us, if we remember our Savior each day.
No comments:
Post a Comment