Wow 2 and 1/2 hours for 6 questions, sounds like tons of fun haha. Uh
oh Aaron is driving?!?! I don't know if I feel safe over here! lol.
Sounds like everyone had a decent spring break, except for Mom :(. I
hope she feels better! We had a pretty solid week this week. This week
was once again full of finding, finding and more finding!
We actually found 5 new investigators this week, which is the most I
have found in a week before. Although one of them has already dropped
us, and three of the others are brothers who didn't seem particularly
interested, but set a time we could come back, so we will see how it
goes. One of those new investigators name is Ahjee. We had a really
good lesson with him Tuesday, and he actually committed to baptism!
But a couple days later he texted us saying he researched the Mormons
and doesn't want to meet with us anymore :( We think he found out
about the history about blacks in the church, and our stance on gays,
to which he is both. But he said he would continue to read the Book of
Mormon, and we will call him in about a month to see how he is doing.
We had a couple lessons with Ron this week. Of course we talked about
having faith again. We really just pounded into him the importance of
reading the Book of Mormon everyday, since he wasn't doing it all the
time. He committed to it, and we will be following up with him
everyday so we will see how it goes. He didn't come to church on
Sunday, although when we went over later in the afternoon, he had been
watching general conference all afternoon, so that's probably better!
haha. He is slowly progressing, he has recognized that since he has started praying that he is thinking better thoughts, and he recognizes
the spirit when he prays. He is just a stubborn old man lol, but he
will get there.
Friday I was on exchanges with one of our zone leaders, Elder White.
We had a miracle at the end of the day. We were walking to a potential
investigator, but we made a wrong turn, and spent several minutes
looking for house numbers so we could know which way to go. When we
finally found a number, a guy turned the corner by us so we started
talking to him. We started teaching him about the Restoration, and the
whole time he was saying, "Wooowwww this is amazing", "How have I
never heard this before" At one point he even told us he was mind
blown haha. When we asked him how he felt after we recited the first
vision, he said he was feeling so many emotions at once and it was
incredible.We told him that it was the spirit, and he is now super
excited to start meeting with the missionaries. The only problem is
that he doesn't live in our area :(. but that was kind of the cool
thing about it, is that we wouldn't have been right there if we hadn't
taken so long to find a house number, and he told us that he never
comes to that area. So that was pretty awesome.
Saturday I had a pretty cool experience. We went to knock on a door of
a potential investigator, and they didn't live there, but the girl
that lived there talked to us, and we had a little lesson with here
there and set a return appointment, so that was a cool little miracle.
Right as we walked away from the door, is when Ahjee told us that he
doesn't want to meet with us anymore. I started to feel a little
discouraged, I felt like that every time we see a miracle, we see the
reverse right after. Right as I was feeling a bit down though, this
lady pulled over in her car, and asked us for some literature, she
said her Mormon friend recently died and was curious as to what we
believe. She didn't want us to come over though. Then right as she was
leaving she randomly said, "Don't get discouraged" I felt the spirit
very strongly when she said that, and knew that God sent her so I
could here that. It was a really cool spiritual experience to pick me
up.
Sunday we had another cool miracle. We were walking to the hospital to
go give someone a blessing, and we started talking to this guy named
Forest; on the street. When we told him about how we had a prophet on
the earth today, he responded, "Isn't a modern day prophet a sign of
the true church?" We just responded "Yeah exactly!" He then asked
about why God only spoke to the Jews, so we taught him about the Book
of Mormon and how God loves all his children. He loved it! We are now
going to meet with him on Saturday, he seems super prepared! Last
miracle for the week: At 8:00 we had only talked to four people so
far, and needed to talk to 24 more to reach our weekly goal of 140. So
we only had 1 hour left, and usually in an hour you can talk to about
10-12 people. But we prayed for help to reach our goal, and in one
hour we had 25 different conversations!
So our week was pretty great, and filled with tons of miracles! I hope
you all have a great week. I love and miss you!! I will talk to you
next week if Aaron doesn't kill you with his driving lol!
Elder Burnside
On April 20th he wrote
Sounds like a pretty good week. Lol I warned you about letting Aaron
drive! haha. And what is this snow thing you speak of? I seem to have
a faint memory of it haha. Thats cool that Sam got his call to
Tallahassee, and it is super weird to think that I will be half done
when he leaves...
Well our week was pretty interesting, we had a couple interesting
lessons. I guess as always I will start with Ron. We had an
interesting talk to say the least. I believe I have told you before
that he is into conspiracy theories, well he told us the craziest one
yet. After he once again mentioned that it is very difficult for him
to believe in God since he doesn't know exactly what he looks like,
and that sort of stuff; he somehow started talking about this
conspiracy that he believes. He told us that there are lizard people
that live in the center of the earth. He told us that their leader is
actually the "king of the world". He then showed us a video of one of
these lizard people attacking someone. So we just kind of ended the
lesson and left because it got way out of hand, and we didn't go back
for several days. But when we visited him again, he didn't talk about
any crazy theories and we were able to have a good lesson about the
Book of Mormon. He then actually came to church, and it was all about
the importance of the Book of Mormon, and I guess that got it through
to him. SO now he is actually going to read every single day. Which
means he is progressing slowly but surely.
We had a lesson with Nandy, a recent convert, on the gospel of Jesus
Christ. We talked a lot about how great the Atonement is, and
repentance. And we talked about baptisms, and the importance of
baptisms for the dead. Which we are trying to get her to go do. Anyway
it was a good lesson, Nandy and her husband troy always have some
really good insights.
Lubia's son Warenn had his 7th birthday, so we went to their little
party. I love that family, they are so cool! Anyway Lubia's oldest
son, Quinn, is married and has a one year old son; so we actually had
the celebration at his apartment. We shared a little message about
praying in families at the end, and they really enjoyed it. So maybe
we will be able to start teaching them sometime soon.
Saturday we had a lesson with a referral we got named Bless. He is
from Jamaica and is interesting to say the least. He is really
intelligent , when we showed up for our lesson he was working on his
invention which he is getting patented. It creates energy, like
windmills and solar panels, but it is more efficient and it can work
no matter what the conditions are. It was pretty cool. Anyway getting
back to our lesson, he was very difficult to teach. He would go off on
some really long crazy tangent after everything we would say. He said
something about how the son is male and the moon is female and they
are married. And he said that in Genesis when God says "Let us create
man in our image" that God was talking to mother nature. So he had
some crazy views, but he really wanted to read the Book of Mormon, and
was very intrigued by the Joseph Smith story. So we are going back
this week, so hopefully we will be able to stay a little more on
topic. haha.
That was pretty much our week. We had a lot of appointments cancel, so
we have a lot of potentials that we are trying to work with. So
Hopefully I will have a little more to talk about next week! I love
you have a great week!!
Elder Burnside
P.S. I actually took some pictures! They are of the super Delicious
cookies we made during weekly planning! Talk to you next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment