June 17, 2013

This week has still been kind of slow. We are trying to work with the members and get to know them. The focus for the mission is use members to find their friends and those they know so we can teach them with their help. So we have been trying to work with the members which has been kind of hard. The ward was told they were getting sisters. Which I forgot to tell you about last week but when we arrived at our apartment the first night we had been heart-attacked because they thought that we were going to be sisters. So all the members were way excited about that. But now that we are here they always ask every time we meet someone new, what happened to the sisters. So they obviously wanted the sister missionaries so it has been kind of hard to work with them. We were able to serve for one L.A we helped him move into his apartment which is right down the street from us. And we also helped a member do some work around his yard. Those two opportunities have given us a relationship with those members but there are still a lot more that we need to build that trust with. 

    We have been trying to focus a lot on get L.A. back to church as well there are a ton of them out here. So we are just trying to befriend them and give them a reason to come back. A lot of them were at one time very strong and active members that have just fallen away for one reason or another. Funny thing happened this week. We went to a guys house, who we had stopped by last week and set up an appointment with, when we went there this week though we talked to him and shared a brief message. We thought that his name was Bro Allen and that he was a member of the ward that was just L.A. Well when we were trying to update our teaching records on him we found that he wasn't on the ward roster and we have no idea were we got his address from or what his name even is. We called him what we thought his name was and he didn't correct us but he might have also been drunk at the time so we aren't sure where he came from or who he is. So it is pretty crazy. Hopefully we will figure it out. We don't have any investigator right now. There were a couple that were already found but one can't meet for 2-3 more weeks and the other will be gone from this area til August. There are a few people that we have met that might have some potential. We walked by some apartments and there was a guy that yelled at us to come and talk to him. He told us the first time we walked by he felt like the spirit told him he needed to talk to us (he is a pretty spiritual guy) but he ignored it well then we walked by and he stopped us. He has some strong beliefs in God and Jesus Christ so hopefully we can go back and teach him. Other than that not a whole lot has happened just slowly trying to get to know the members better so they can do the finding for us so we don't have to spend all of our time tracting. So we have just been trying to visit them and the L.A. families and help strengthen their testimony and their desire to come back to church. That is the goal in working with members is finding those who are ready to teach and having them get them in contact with us. I do love the work though it is awesome to get to know these people. Hopefully we can get to that point were they trust us and know that we are here for them. It will make things go more smoothly. I love getting to study the gospel more as well. There are such wonderful things written in the scripture and I encourage you guys to keep reading them. 

 

I love you all a ton. Thanks for all your love and prayers know that you are always in mine. Have a great week.