This week was warm! Well at the beginning it was kinda cold but toward the end it got really warm. It was really awesome. I didn't realize how much easier it is to walk around when you aren't drenched. I love hearing from all of you guys. I can't wait to see Caitlyn, Byrant, Jaron, and unnamed baby. I can't believe Kirsten is having another baby. That's so intense. I'm sorry that I haven't been able to respond to all your letters. I just don't have enough time. But this week was really awesome.
So Tuesday wasn't very good because we didn't plan the night before so we didn't know what we were doing. (the reason we didn't plan was because our bathroom sink was clogged and we tried to unclog it. We got drano for it but it didn't do anything. So I took a spoon and shoved it down the sink and when I pulled it out there a bunch of hair on it. YUCK! We spent like an hour trying to get all the hair out. We think it was from the people who lived there before us. But yeah we didn't really have too much time. Wow this is a really long parenthesis). But on Wednesday we went on exchanges with the zone leaders. Exchanges are when we switch companions just for a day. So Elder Mauchley went to Salem and Elder Newman (the zone leader) came here. Elder Newman is a really good guy and a really hard worker. He didn't know the area at all but we still got a ton of work done. We went and tracted apartments and got a bunch of potential investigators. So that night we went to the church to go on splits (which means we switched companions for an hour) with the ward mission leader and ward missionaries....it's complicated. We had a list of people in the ward who hadn't been contacted for over a year. Nobody in the ward seemed to know who they were so we decided to try to figure out who these people are. The first person hung up on us. The second person said she wasn't ready to come back to church or see missionaries. We were getting kinda discouraged and thought that we should just try to remove their records or something. But the third person we saw, her name is Julie Wyatt. She let us in and was overwhelmed with joy. She told her son George (age apx 25) and they both were super happy to see us. She said she had somehow dropped out of the radar for like a year and that she wanted to come to church but she just didn't know where to go. Then she said on that very morning she had prayed that the Elders would be able to find her. Oh man, it was amazing. It's things like that, that just make the mission the best experience of my life. I mean all other hardships aside, this is missionary work. I love it!
Well after that experience me and Elder Mauchley decided to make it a big priority to try and contact the people in the ward who we don't know. We went through the entire ward list (which is HUGE because most people on it are less active) and put a question mark next to the ones we didn't know. We are working on trying to meet all these people.
It's really sad that there are people that you think are ready to change but then they suddenly stop meeting with you. It's sad but they aren't ready. I know that I can't ever give up them and they will make the right decision if they want. It all comes down to agency. We seem to lose a lot of investigators but at the same time we get more too.
We got a call this week from a lady named Raejean (she was a former investigator the I never met (a former investigator is one who asked us not to meet with her anymore) wow I'm on fire with these parentheses). She just got finished with a surgery and for some reason she just really felt like she wanted to start meeting with us again. So yesterday we had an AWESOME lesson. We taught her the plan of salvation. She was really touched when she heard us tell her that we lived with God before we came to Earth. She started crying. The spirit was so strong. She really got it. It wasn't that me and Elder Mauchley said anything extremely profound, quite frankly we talked very simply. The reason it touched her so much was because she felt the spirit AND listened to it. She was taught from her Heavenly Father not from us. We were just lucky enough to be there to witness it. It was really cool.
Well those are the main points that stand out when I think about this week. We heard a little bit more about Joanne and J.J. It turns out that her mother is anti mormon and is convincing her to not meet with us. I think they really do want to know for themselves that this gospel is true but it may take a little more time. We weren't able to meet with Matt, Ariana, or Shasta because they were out of town. But hopefully we'll be able to contact them this week. And hopefully we don't lose our phone again. Ok that's a different story that you don't really need to hear. It sufficeth me to say that we felt totally helpless without our phone for a whole half a day (a whole half?????).
Ok this week was awesome. Last week was a little bit stressful but hey if you don't have the bad how can you know the good. Thank you again for all your support and everything that you guys do. You're awesome!
