Missionary Monday - Moville Week 9

 

I don't know how to start these things.

So last Monday we ate with the Marenco family, that was good. Their son Chris is leaving for his mission in April but finished his job the week before so he's been hanging out at home being a bum doing whatever he wants, and his family sure let's him know how they feel about it hahah, I remember that stage. Good times.

Tuesday was good, we had District meeting and they didn't have an assigned topic for the week so it could be whatever I wanted. Sister Johnson walked into our meeting about 15 minutes in right at the start of the Doctrine and that scared the crap out of me, (between her and president Johnson, she wears the pants.) I didn't know she was coming. But luckily, I had chosen to base district meeting off of Luke 15 which is the 3 parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son. And she LOVES parables so she ate it up and thought it was awesome. Then we had a surprise lesson with a guy named Roberto, we were going to this house to follow up with a lady we had knocked into last week that let us talk for a little, turns out she wasn't there but the guy who answered the door (Roberto) was interested too so he let us in and we taught the first lesson and he accepted a soft baptismal invitation.

Wednesday we had designated splits like last week and I was determined to have it be more successful than last week. So I planned 4 lessons between 7-9. And it was awesome. I went out with Chris and the bishops son christian, we taught a recent convert/Less active teen, and then Katterin (Who set a date for her wedding woot woot) I was worried about them with the marriage thing, they were dragging their feet. And then Elder Castillo went out with Hermano Alvarez and they had a lesson with a referral named Jesus, and he accepted a soft baptismal invitation. And then after that they taught another referral from the YSA sisters, it's an old lady that has basically been Mormon without being Mormon her whole life, she got her kids baptized and everything but she just loved coffee too much. Earlier that day Elder Castillo and I had a read a "Commit to Christ to quit smoking" Strategy from a missionary book and so he figured the same principles applied for coffee, and it worked. He committed her to stop for 24 hours and we have recommitted her every day since for another 24 hours each time. Coffee has basically been the only thing holding her back, he said she reads the book of Mormon every day and has a testimony of everything (Minus the word of wisdom, until now hehe). So we are excited about her.

The most eventful thing that happened Thursday was while contacting at the bus stops we met this Vietnamese guy who couldn't have been happier to see us (we tried teaching him a little but he wasn't super interested in what we had to say). He was like 60 years old and Buddhist. He was probably the happiest person I've ever met. He said in Vietnam he was a famous songwriter or something but then he came here and had to learn English and that has slowed him down. But he sang us a song and it was pretty good! Then he told us how he wants to be the next great American poet. Then his bus came and he left. If a Vietnamese guy makes it big in poetry in the near future, I heard it first. 

Friday we had a surprise lesson with the people we were looking for on Tuesday. This time we were looking for Roberto and he wasn't there but the lady and her husband were and they both wanted to have a lesson with us so we taught them the full first lesson and that went pretty well, the husband was more into it than the wife but I'll take it. 

Saturday we decided to tract an area that looked pretty solid only to find out it was tracted 2 days earlier by the English elders :( So then we went to street contacting and met this black guy at a bus stop, right off the bat he asks us about baptisms for the dead (I was thinking the same thing you are right now at this point) He had huge dreads and looked borderline homeless but he really shocked us, he either took philosophy in college or was receiving inspired knowledge from another source 🚬 He was going in deep with Christianity and was asking tons of questions about the Book of Mormon and was comprehending all of it pretty well, he didn't like how much faith was involved but he was accepting to give reading it a shot so he could find out if everything we were saying was true. Then he brought up blacks and the priesthood. I feel like even if there was a good answer for it he wouldn't have accepted it. So that was kind of a damper since we were starting to make some progress. But he still said he'd order a book of Mormon so I hope he does. Later that night we had dinner and a lesson with the Hernandez family and Bryan. They are all Venezuelan so they wanted to make us "Arepas" which were pretty good. They are kinda like a Spanish version of a biscuit, you cut the biscuit in half then put chicken beans and guacamole on it and eat it like a sandwich. The lesson went well but Bryan couldn't help but bring everything back to the politics in Venezuela, so that was greeeeeat. Unfortunately he told us he's going to move to Spain since it doesn't look like he'll be able to stay :(

Sunday we had "Coordination" I guess they don't want it to be called correlation anymore. Every week Hermano Colindres one ups himself with the way he does things. This week he basically came up with his own "Key Indicators" So he can have a better idea of what's going on with investigators and on the same PDF thing that he uses he added a section to assign ward leaders to making sure investigators get fellowshipped and he had all the ward leaders there as well. (Normally it's just us and the missionaries) After that we were calling people for church and unfortunately we found out that Carolina had coffee, her friend (Aka satan) came over to talk and she made her coffee and she couldn't resist. I think we are either going to tape a picture of Jesus on the coffee can or just take it. Because she wants to stop and knows she needs to, but her friend is making it hard. Church was good, they chastised everyone in priesthood for not doing their home teaching for 75 minutes haha. I think it was in response to someone who is recently active again that gave his testimony last week, he basically said "I'm active again and it's not thanks to any of you, no one reached out" Turns out home teachers hadn't been over since 2006. Which is terrible, but Brigham young also said "Salvation is an individual operation. I am the only person that can possibly save myself." So I don't think that guy should blame his home teachers for him being inactive. Anyways, it made the ward look bad so they are trying to fix that. The rest of the night was good, nothing special. 

Today we went shopping, we might go to Clarksburg there's an under Armour outlet there so I might go look at stuff I don't have money to buy 🤑

I only have one picture this week sorry bout it...

Also! If anyone has any visual learning aids that they like I would love to hear about them, I feel like we've been getting a lot of smiling and nodding lately...

Can't wait to hear from everyone!

Elder Beck