one word - hoosier
this cat followed us tracting for an hour
the Williams family!
me & S. Lamb
awesome signs in Anderson at a member's tire shop
This mission thing is making me a little less picky. I now like raspberry vinaigrette and poppy seed dressing on my salad. :) Don't worry though, there's still things I don't like.
Only 2 at church this Sunday. :( I don't know what's up with our investigators. Our less actives are even trying to slip out from under us too. It's a little disheartening when we plan for 10 gators and we only get 2. Such is the nature of the work I suppose.
Tuesday we met Sister Pherson and her husband John. She is from the Philippines (was baptized in 1995 by an Elder Humpherys), and she's been less active because of her husband. She has a very strong testimony, but he is pretty against the church. She's been going with him to his church (she doesn't drive). She met Sister Joray at Kroger a few days earlier, and she said she really wanted to come back to church. She told Sister Joray that she wanted us to come over and talk to her husband. And so we did. Sister Pherson is so sweet! She told us of how she used to have a welcome party at her home for any greenie straight from the MTC. She is going to be such an asset to this ward! Her husband John is nice, and said we're welcome in his home any time. However, he's misinformed on some things about our church and he's pretty close minded. :( He says he just doesn't understand and wants it explained, but then he goes off and more wants a debate. Gotta give him some credit though because he brought his wife to church yesterday for the first 2 hours. He's got a hard shell, but if he'd take the time to listen, he'd be able to understand (and realize some of what he "knows" is not accurate) and he'd be a great member. After meeting with them Tuesday, S. Mat and I both said that we could see the goodness in him and his potential. We just have to tap in to that. His conversion probably won't happen before I finish my mission because he's got a long way to go, but we'll at least try to start and see what happens.
We stopped by Angie's briefly Tuesday night. She told us that she had gotten up for church but then had fallen back asleep and she was so upset with herself. She didn't make it again this week, but we haven't seen her yet to find out why. We're really stumped as to why she doesn't make it. She does everything else we ask of her, and she wants to do it. She has a testimony, and she's going to be baptized. Something is keeping her from church otherwise she would be there. Hopefully we can figure out what it is and resolve that concern this week. Angie has not smoked since March 17th!!! SWEET! It's so exciting to see her free from that addiction and be able to be even more of a mom to her girls. When we stopped by Thursday briefly, we noticed some tea on the table though - so we'll have to review the WoW with her this week. We emphasized the coffee and cigarettes, so she probably didn't pick up on the tea. Wednesday we had a lesson on baptism with her and we asked her again what her thoughts were, and she basically shared her testimony of how she understood so much more about the gospel and about baptism now than when she was first baptized. She couldn't find all the words, but we could feel her heart. So awesome! She's praying about a baptism date for late April.
Lindsey dropped us. :( When we stopped by last Sunday afternoon, she peeked through the blinds and then didn't answer the door. When we called to confirm our appointment for Wednesday, she said she was busy. When we asked if we could reschedule, she said she would call us. :( :( Somehow, she got anti-ed. I don't know what more we could've done. We met her Wednesday, taught her Thursday and Friday, and by Sunday she slipped through our fingers. It's so sad. She was so ready for this. But something came and snatched that feeling away from her. It's so sad to lose her. But, obviously the Lord has other plans for her. I just hope she'll recognize her chance when it comes around again.
Wednesday we met with Michael. He's heard all the main lessons (Restoration, Plan of Salvation, Gospel of Jesus Christ), but he doesn't have a testimony. (P.S. it bothers me when missionaries plow ahead and teach the lessons boom-boom-boom rather than helping people develop a testimony. But that's a ranting for another day. hehe) So we decided to review the Restoration lesson with him. We used the apostasy cups to teach him about prophets/apostles, and help him see why there's so many churches. He said it really helped him to understand and it gave him a lot of things to think about. Yay. We're making some progress.
We met with Jamie 3 times this week. He appreciates us coming over. He's still really hung up on the Sabbath being on Saturday though. He brings it up (and the exact same points) each lesson. He had pulled out his BOM and started reading the Intro and the witnesses before our appointment on Wednesday. We talked about that a bit and about the importance of seeking a witness from God. And we stressed the importance of reading the BOM and praying to be able to know the truth. I wasn't there for when he was taught about the apostasy and Joseph Smith (I was on exchanges), but S. Mat said it went well. Sunday we went to teach him about prophets. He agreed on the need for prophets and he said that since Matt. 7 says to "beware of false prophets" there must be some true ones. He didn't really hop on board though with Pres. Monson, mainly because, you guessed it, the Sabbath day. Ugh. If he could just get over that issue, I don't think he'd have much hindrance. It's so hard with him. There's that spark in him that we have to tap in to just right. If we don't get it just right, it won't work. It takes a lot of thought to plan for his lessons, and even then we don't do such a good job at implementing it exactly. I really want him to see the truth. He was a convert to the 7th Day Adventist church, and he's so staunch in the belief of the Sabbath. If he could convert to the true church, imagine how strong he'd be! I hope we can help him receive answers to his prayers.
Desiree canceled on us last minute. But she's moving out, so that's a good thing! Because of her canceling, we were able to make it down to see Joe, a referral from HQ that lives down in Tipton (30 minutes away). It's been a while since we last tried to see him - we were going to see him the day our car got hit, but then that didn't happen. His answering machine let us know that he is a reverend, so we weren't quite sure what to expect, especially since he ordered a Bible. We weren't sure if he wanted to see if our Bible was the same or if he really wanted a "Mormon Bible" (aka BOM), so we brought both along with us as we traveled down south with Sister Lalonde. He's kind of a quirky guy, but he and his wife are really nice. He is super smart, and he loves to study religion. He is an ordained minister, but doesn't have a church or anything. He read the BOM first at the library, and was fascinated. He's read so much - D&C, PGP, a history of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and I think a bunch of other church publicated (yes, that's a word now) things. He said over the years he kept being drawn back to the BOM for some reason, so he's read it a few times. He's never been to church though. And though he's got all the academic/historical knowledge, he lacks a full understanding of the implications, and he lacks a spiritual witness. This was shown as I asked him what has prevented him from being baptized in our church. He said he didn't know - he'd never thought about being baptized, because he'd been baptized in the Pentecostal church. So, we've got some work to do in building testimony. He'd be a fun asset to the ward. I hope it all goes well with him and Christy coming to know the truth. The hard thing is that they live 30 minutes out of town and don't have a car, and we only have 2 active members down there. Hmm. That'll be a challenge.
We met with Judy twice this week. I am impressed by her. She's in constant pain from migraines and has chest pains also and hadn't slept at all. But she copes with it and moves on. And she let us in to talk. We were going to teach her the spirit world through the degrees of glory. S. Mat started in but I felt restrained for some reason. A few thoughts came to my mind of what I could share, but I did not feel like any of them were right. So I just didn't say anything. I was kind of confused, and I'm sure S. Mat was waiting for me to come in. But instead, Judy asked some questions about the do's and don'ts of our religion. So we were able to share some of that with her and help her understand. Yesterday we went back and we did teach the plan of salvation and it went well. It's interesting that she believes pretty much the same thing we do about the spirit world - yet I know that didn't come from any church. She's gaining knowledge and understanding of our beliefs, but she's not gaining a testimony - she's not looking for one. She just wants to understand us.
We had dinner with the Dwigans' Thursday night. We showed up at 6pm and there was a roofing salesman there. He had his stuff all sprawled out in the living room, so we sat at the dinner table while he finished up. He came at 4:20 and didn't leave until 6:40. Brother Dwigans was pretty upset after he left; Sister Dwigans had let him in because she wanted the free $25 Walmart gift card. :) God sure works in mysterious ways though. Before the salesman finished up, he asked us a lot of questions about the church. We were able to clear up that the prophet is just a prophet (not to take away from Christ), those who practice polygamy are excommunicated, and something else he asked. He then asked how the prophet disseminated new revelations to the church (he struggled to find the word revelation, and he said epiphany, but he knew that wasn't right because an epiphany comes from man not from God). He threw out a random guess that maybe the prophet would announce every 6 months or something. So then we explained about general conference. Before all this, I made a joke about coming to his house for dinner since he had disrupted our dinner plans. Then he said he lives on the south side of Indy. Bummer. After he asked these questions, we offered to send the missionaries to his door, but he said he liked this informal setting better where it didn't seem like it was pushed down his throat. We did give him a card for our website, as well as the link for general conference. Hopefully he'll check it out. But, I'll probably never know.
We saw Deven again that night. He's such a bright kid. If it weren't for his less active father and his stepmom who's against the church, I think we could teach him faster and he'd probably be baptized already. But we have to respect the family situation. His dad is supportive but provides no push. His stepmom wakes him up for church. I'm impressed with her, given her feelings towards the church. Deven is still looking to know for himself that the BOM and the church are true. I personally feel that he already knows it. He just needs to know that he knows it.
Friday we went tracting in the cold. We came across a court off of the street were were knocking, and decided to do it real quick. Good thing we did. We met Lynette and she let us in. When we asked if she'd heard about our church, she said she'd heard a lot, and her voice had a good tone to it. In the fall she took a month long trip out west and spent some time in Utah. She said she doesn't know enough about our beliefs, but the things she has heard she can't understand because it's so different from what she was raised with. She had some questions that we answered, and somehow we got on the BOM, and she was really interested in that. We handed her a copy and she was listening and looking through it. Something came into her heart though and snatched out that good feeling because after we talked about Christ coming to the Americas, she handed the BOM back and her demeanor changed. So sad! It reminded me of the parable in Matt 13 about the soils - the one who receives the word with joy initially, and then it gets snatched up because of the cares of the world or whatever it is. She did say it was all interesting and wanted to know more, but we knew she wasn't quite ready for the discussions. We could tell that she wants to know more before discussing it. So we gave her a website card and told her she could learn the basics on there. Hopefully that will give her the preparation she feels she needs to be able to meet with us.
We met with Mike again and discussed 1 Nephi 4-6. We had told him to look for principles that he could apply in his life. He said he didn't find any. Man, there's so much about faith and obedience in those chapters! He really doesn't know how to read the scriptures for personal application. If it's not directly teaching doctrine or praising Jesus, he doesn't get anything out of it. We spent the time talking about the things we pulled out of it in hopes of teaching him how he can get more out of his reading. Hopefully it helps. But he hasn't been to church the last 2 weeks, so if that continues, we won't be able to meet with him anymore.
Friday night we drove over to Anderson to do our exchange. I went there with S. Lamb and S. Vanderhooft came to Kokomo. S. Lamb is awesome! She's so fun. She's only been out 1.5 transfers but she's powerful. Her only evident downfall is that she doesn't really realize how powerful she is. I know that when she gets put with a really strong/bold senior companion, she's just going to explode with awesomeness. We had some good lessons with less actives and recent converts. We ended up on 2 of the same streets I was on when I was there on exchanges with S. Mat back in June, so we tried to see some potentials that I talked to (miraculously I remembered their names and houses), but none of them were home. Being with S. Lamb was great and I had fun, and it also made me appreciate S. Mat even a little more. I really missed her. In Kokomo, they had five member present lessons Saturday! Wahoo! S. Mat had a lot of realizations because of the exchange. We had a really good talk about it when I got back, and it was so neat. We both realized that there's more of each other to love, and we realized more just how much we love each other. We've had some rough patches, but that's led us to where we are now - best friends for life. What more fun could be had than to share the gospel 24/7 with your best friend? I love her!
Transfers are next week. We've been thinking that S. Mat will leave. At the end of last transfer, Bishop predicted that as well. But now his prediction is different. The reason that's worrisome, is that in the last like 20 transfers, he's only been wrong once and only partially right once (predicted one would leave but they both did). His new thought is that we're getting double transferred. :( :( If I get moved, I feel that it means I'll open a new area. Not something I really want to do, but if that's what God wants, I'll do it. But we'll have to wait until next week to see what happens.
Thanks for all your love and support!
sister smurf
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