Mission

Mission

Monday, December 9, 2013

Let it Snow!

   Hello Friends and Family!  Go Eagles!
   
   Tuesday was a good day. I felt inspired to stop by one of our investigators who we were about to drop because he never holds appointments and when we stopped by he was home and we were able to talk to him for and his wife for a while. We gave them a quick lesson on the Book of Mormon and bore our testimonies. The spirit was there and we were able to commit them to read and pray; we were also able to set up a return appointment. We'll see if they hold or not… 

   Wednesday, we ran into a former member of the church, Bernardo, as we were walking down the street. He chased us down, told us his conversion story, then told us how he wanted to repent and become a missionary. He told us all about the steps he's been taking to get back into the church and how he's done all this stuff to change his life. He was a cool, honest guy. He spoke better Spanish than English however so we gave his info to the Spanish elders.  Later this Russian dude, Misha (Russian for Michael), followed us on the bus and came up to us asking us all these questions about the church. He is very very interested but it was really hard to understand anything he was saying. However he told us he's on the FBI's wanted list so I guess well just meet with him until he disappears. 

   Nothing to exciting happened Thursday. We had zone training for the first half of the day, then district lunch in center city, then we went and tried to contact some referrals the rest of the day. 

   Friday we had our flash mob. For the flash mob we gathered about 30 missionaries and met up at a subway station in center city at about 4. Since it was raining outside Friday, everyone was taking the subways. We all gathered together and got on the most packed subway we could find. As soon as the doors closed we started to sing one of three songs; I am a child of God, child's prayer, or hark the harold angels sing. At first It went horribly because there were to many people crammed on the subway so we couldn't hear each other. Then, at the next stop, we chose to get on a less packed subway car that still had quite bit of people on it; it started to get better. Then we tried doing other things and what not. All in all, The spirit filled the subway car when we sang and we got lots of peoples contact info. We also got a good number of people to sing with us on the subway. I would say it was a success. 

   Saturday we played football again. After football I gave this lady in the ward and her child whose in the hospital a blessing as directed by the spirit. They're doing better. Then we went home and got ready for the ward Christmas party. When we got there we helped set up and everything was real nice and a lot of people came and the food looked good; there were lots of investigators there. When the party began, the lady at the microphone started to get aggressive. She ended up yelling at people through the microphone and she made a kid cry and she scared some of the investigators... crazy crazy crazy... Even though the member at the microphone was a bit of a control freak, the party still went pretty well. Thank goodness she's not the Relief Society President!

Yesterday it dumped a several inches of snow out here in Philly. The snow made the traffic horrible. It didn't start snowing until church started, so we were able to travel to church, but by the end of church it was snowing pretty good. The roads started to ice over and traffic came to a crawl, cars were sliding everywhere. Philly drivers are worse than Utah drivers too, so that made  things even worse. We usually take the bus or walk everywhere we go so because of the snow, all the buses pretty much stopped. 

   After church (12:00), the Zone Leaders had a baptism, so we stayed for that. The spirit was very strong during the baptism, I remembered back to when I was baptized and how much joy I felt that day. Elder Shamo and I taught a 5 minute lesson on the restoration as part of the baptism. We were supposed to go home after the baptism and study for a few hours then head over to a members house, the Rennie's, for dinner (4:00), then go back to the church to watch the Christmas devotional. All the missionaries in the ward (six of us) were invited over for dinner because of the baptism. Because of the snow, the traffic was so bad, we ended up waiting an hour for our bus to go home, then realized its not coming and decided to cross the street and wait for a bus to take us over to the Rennie's for dinner. After waiting for another hour, we still saw no buses coming either way. The sister missionaries have a car, and sometimes the zone leaders are allowed to borrow it. The zone leaders had the car and picked Elder Shamo and I up and dropped us off at the next bus stop we needed to take to the Rennie's. The zone leaders had the car because they had an appointment scheduled right before dinner; the sisters just stayed at the church after the baptism and studied at the church. So after they dropped us off, we waited another hour for this bus, but it never came. By the time the zone leaders were done with their appointment it was about 4 and they went and gave the car back to the sisters at the church, then the sisters got permission and gave the zone leaders a ride to the Rennie's, dropped them off, then came and picked us up at the bus stop (about 4:30) and took us over. Luckily, Dinner was awesome! After dinner, the zone leaders went with a member to the the church and Elder Shamo and I went with the sister to the church. When we got there (7:30) nothing was set up for the devotional. Found out that the Spanish ward didn't want to set it up because they thought nobody would be there because of the snow... They forgot to tell us. We tried to watch the devotional on the computer in the clerks office but that computer doesn't work very well and we couldn't fit all the people who came (about 20 people) in the clerks office. So we just ended up getting dropped off at home by the sisters (just after 9). On a normal day the buses run at about 15 to 20 minutes a stop. It normally takes us about a half hour, from the time we get on the bus, to get to the church via bus and subway. And it normally takes us about 45 minutes to get to the Rennie's from the church via bus and subway. So that's how yesterday went… 

   I love and miss you all!

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