Dear Family and Friends,
15 April 2013
Last week was a pretty tough
week but it was nothing compared to this week. And just like last week
it started off with a lot of potential. We called a fellowship to reach
out to the investigator to ask them to set up a lesson for Thursday.
Over the phone the fellowship told us that the investigator (temple tile
worker one) wanted to get baptized in the next few days and that he was
very excited about the church. Wooo! We were stoked! We finally had a
potential!
That very same day we got a referral for a family of
two that requested Spanish missionaries to teach the husband and wife,
both in their sixties. Their daughter had just been sealed in the temple
and joined the church the year before. Wooo! We were stoked! We finally
had a potential!
The day we got the referral we went over and talked to
them. We taught in English because the daughter didn't speak a ton of Spanish and that's how they greeted us. The family of 2 (we'll call them
the Mrtnz') were interested but Mr. Mtnz didn't seem to grasp it too
well. We found out that Mrs. Mrtnz had watched conference that past
weekend and believed that Thomas S. Monson was a prophet. Awesome start!
We taught them the first lesson and tried to commit them to baptism but
they said they wanted to go slowly. Ok. We can work with that. We
stopped by and talked with them for 4 minutes the next day and asked how
her reading went. She said that all day she had felt really good and
felt that God told her the Book of Mormon was true. Sweet! So we set up a
lesson for Thursday planning on extending a hard baptismal date for 3
weeks ahead.
On Thursday we had lesson with temple tile worker
investigator and the Spanish family. We excitedly prepared and planned
and were ready for the best day in Queen Creek yet. The whole day seemed
to be awesome. First up was the lesson with the 'Mtnz' family. We were
planning on only speaking spanish with them to prepare them to go to
church in Spanish. We walked in the door and the first thing she told us
is that she wanted to get baptized. We hadn't even prayed yet! We said
absolutely and began the lesson. As soon as we started, Mrs Mtnz asked
us to speak in English instead of spanish so that she could understand. I
thought, "
(We taught her all the commandments and she said she
would leave behind coffee forever because she knew that the Word of
Wisdom was from God)
Aaaahhhhhhhh. Obviously we
said yes but told her that would mean different missionaries would teach
her and go to church with her etc. She said she wanted us to finish
teaching her but she needed to go to church in English. So. We referred
them back to the English elders but are going to finish teaching her and
the English elders will baptize her.
I was devastated but you know, she is still getting baptized which is the important thing and we are still doing all the work.
We
invited her to view a baptism that weekend which she accepted. She told
us that she would be busy on the 20th so we moved her baptism up to the
19th. We had her get interviewed for baptism right after the one she
saw and she passed that.
She is the most prepared person I have ever taught. Her
first missionary contact will be 11 days before her baptism and she is
getting baptized on the 11th day of learning about the gospel. Just an
amazing story.
So, rewinding back to that Thursday day. We had just
put someone on date but had to pass them off to the English
missionaries. We were excited for her but sad that we just lost an incredibly solid investigator.
But it was ok because we still had a lesson that night
with the other solid investigator we had! They were 40 minutes late to
the lesson but only because they were lost. We had invited a member from
the ward and an investigator who was getting baptized the very next day
to testify to him and relate to him. We were going to meet at the
church near the baptismal font. The set up could not have been better.
Anyway, as soon as we started teaching we could tell something was
wrong. Long story short he had been given tons of anti-mormon material.
The lesson shifted away from the gospel to resolving weird concerns
about how much the plates weighed. The lesson was spiraling out of
control. By the end of the lesson he had decided he didn't want to get
baptized and didn't believe what we were sharing with him was true.
So on Thursday we lost everything we had. We lost
every. single. investigator and had no one else to teach. It was the
most depressing day of my mission, hence the picture at the top. We came
in that night and just lay on the ground from 9:15-10:15. Discouraged
doesn't really do it justice.
The next day only helped to put things into perspective
(weekly planning session where we make plans for who we are going to
teach that week and what etc etc). We had nothing or no one to plan for.
As depressing as all of that is, Mrs Mtnz is still going to get baptized on Saturday and we are very excited about that.
We
also got a referral for someone who has read the entire Book of Mormon
before. She read it as a book and not prayerfully the first time. I
texted her yesterday because she won't let us come by because her
parents don't like the church. In the text I asked if she had prayed in
it and she said she is rereading it and has prayed and feels like God
told her it is true. She is the only person in our area that we have
found and her parents won't let us teach her. Our only communication is
via text message. We're praying for their hearts to be softened so that
she can come to church and the activities.
We
drove past the Gilbert temple (for those on google maps if you want to
see how big our area is, go from the
Gilbert temple to Florence and then
east and west some). It's pretty nice.
Moving away from depressing and somewhat exciting news haha...
Arizona
uses dust control trucks. We had a dust storm last Monday and they had
trucks driving around dumping water on and off the roads to limit the
dust being picked up.
Last Monday we went to play ping pong(!) and basketball
at the church for P-day. I went up for a lay up at one point but
tripped over someones foot and landed square on my knee. I don't think
I've ever hurt myself so bad. I got up and hobbled off to the side and
sat there for a few minutes thinking it would get better quickly. I
thought I had broken my kneecap or something. It got bad enough that I
could barely walk. Just touching it softly was excruciating. That night I
prayed that it would heal and I would wake up feeling better the next
day so we could go out and work. When I woke up it was almost entirely
better and I could walk normally. It was still bruised but the bone felt
fine. Pretty cool.
Thanks Grandma and Grandpa J, Susie, Annie, Mom, Eric, Will, and Aunt Andra for the letters
Anyway thank you all for your continued support!
Con amor,
EJ
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