Missionary Monday - Week 2 in DC
This week was great, last p day we went to "& pizza" which is like a more hipster version of blaze pizza or pizza Rev, that was pretty good. While we were in that part of town we saw a huge dome and decided to check it out. It turned out to be a catholic university, we got a lot of weird looks 😂 but it was super cool. Tuesday I decided to read chapter 9 "how do I find people to teach" during personal study cause contacting is awful, I totally feel for the people that aren't interested (which is most people) if I was them and had some white kid trying to talk to me about God, I wouldn't want any part of it either. I say "white kid" because other races aren't big on white people, and white people aren't big on religion, especially old white men, who are always on the metro for work. So contacting has been the biggest stumbling block so far because of that, and also because it's hard to just start a conversation about the restoration, or the plan of salvation, etc. Anyways, as I was reading I got to the section about family history, I thought that was weird cause it seems off topic but the stories it had in there were amazing. One quote from it is "The Spirit of Elijah had touched and softened his heart and had opened a door for the gospel to fill his life." I had never thought of The Spirit of Elijah before. It also said,
Family history is a powerful resource to use in finding those whom the Lord is preparing to receive the restored gospel. Pray to be aware of opportunities to use family history in your finding efforts. People typically have spiritual feelings as they talk about families.
So I was like freak, we gotta try this. So I grabbed a stack of unfolded family search cards (unfolded because they have never even come close to being used) before we left for the day and told my companion my goal was to hand out 1 that day. He was a little skeptical about people caring about that and how it would effect the contact (as was I) we went all day and I hadn't done it yet, we were in a run down apartment complex and ran into these two black ladies walking around the block listening to rap music, I figured I had nothing to lose so I went for it and said we were missionaries sharing a message about families and I explained family search, and you'd never believe their reactions, they thought it was the coolest thing and wanted to learn about their families. But wait, there's more. We talk about that for a few minutes then she asks "wait, so what are you two doing around here at this time of night, sharing a message about families?" (shout out to Jackson) I asked her "ma'am, have you ever wondered where we were before this life and where we will go after?" she said yeah of course, so I told her all about the plan of salvation and how families are important to God because he's our loving Heavenly Father and we can live with our families forever if we follow Christ's example etc. We talked about that for about 10 minutes and by the end she had tears coming down her face and she was asking for our number and basically begged us to come back and teach her more. No one has ever asked us to teach them more before, we always have to ask them if we can.
It was not a coincidence that I happened to pray before the study time to know what to study, choosing to study family history wasn't dumb luck, grabbing the family search cards that day of all days wasn't a coincidence, going to some sketchy apartments at night to contact wasn't by chance, and this woman being affected by what I told her wasn't me. None of this was me, or Elder Stolk. I have always heard stories of people being guided by the spirit for stuff like this on their missions but I didn't realize how insane it is when it actually happens. Our whole conversation started with a family search card.
Sorry that was a long story, but anyways, since then family history cards have been our go-to and the results are crazy, so many more people want to talk with us and learn more about the church when we tell them the church funds it. Wednesday night after we talked about the card and the plan of salvation we were even asked if we would want to run a Bible study that some black ladies have every week 😂 I'll keep you all posted on that.
Thursday we had specialized training, since we don't have a car we had to get a ride since it was pretty far away, the zone leaders volunteered cause they have a van, on the way there we got in a crash 😂 it wasn't super bad but it was definitely avoidable. So we were like an hour late to training. Our investigators are doing great, except they all have living arrangement issues. They all either need to get married or move out, and since they have full on families, they aren't going to move out, but if they get married the legal issues will come since they aren't legal to be here.... It's rough.
Saturday was general conference, super weird having it at 12, 4, and 8. We missed the morning session because we had an appointment with a guy in Union Station, didn't show. So that was a bummer. All of the Hispanics leave food for us in the fridge at the church, it's great and all but yesterday we had 3 full meals and Hispanic food is pretty grodey reheated.
Sunday was good, more general conference. We watch it all at the church with like 15 other people in the chapel, half of those are missionaries 😂 but overall it was great.
Rolling paper that was in a members car, they thought it was an air freshener 😂
Elder Stolk is big on smells so he has a bunch of incense stuff, our apartment smells like India.
In front of the Christ statue is Francisco and Yudie, they are 18&20 (live together) and then the family is the Orsoto family, they've been together for years, also not married... They're both really great and really believe, just not enough to make a change in their relationship status at the moment... We are going to take the Orsoto family to the visitors center and show them the importance of eternal families, hopefully that will help.
This lady is from India. She has more faith than anyone I've met.
