Mission

Mission

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

   This past week has been crazy! Tuesday was supposed to be my last day with Elder Shamo. We had a couple of lessons lined up that didn't hold, we visited some less active members, and tried to talk to one of our members about his word of wisdom problem. What made this week so interesting was the snow. On Tuesday it snowed about 14 inches with somewhat high winds. Because of the snow Elder Shamo and I had to walk everywhere since the buses we're running really slow. The snowing wasn't that bad but the wind was horrible. The wind made it so much colder and it seemed like no matter what direction we walked throughout the whole day, the snow was always blowing in our faces. Coordination was also canceled Tuesday night. When we finally got in Tuesday night, we we're covered in ice. It continued to snow throughout the night. 

   Wednesday morning Elder Shamo and I woke up a little earlier than usual and went over to the zone leaders place to have breakfast together before Elder Shamo and Elder Whitaker left. After breakfast, as we we're about to walk out the door and head down to Broomall, the zone leaders got a call that transfers had been postponed to Thursday because of the travel conditions. I was exited to hear that because it meant I got to spend one more day with Elder Shamo but at the same time I was worried about how that would affect the rest of our day and the rest of our week. Wednesday we had planned for transfers but it was postponed, so the time we would have been spent at transfers was instead spent doing service. We decided to borrow some snow shovels from the church and go shovel snow off peoples sidewalks/yards. We went to the Rennie's home first to help Brother Rennie shovel all the snow out of his huge driveway but when we got there he was almost done so we went to some nearby less active members and shoveled their walkways and parking spots for them. Then the Rennies' fed us brunch real fast and we went over to Brother Abad's home. His home is a disaster... When we got there we cleaned up wet dry wall that fell from the ceiling. When we first got there Elder Shamo pretended to be my new companion but Brother Abad figured it out after a while. I can not even describe what it's like being in Brother Abad's home. When we were done with the dry wall we continued about our day as scheduled; making stop by's and showing up to appointments that fall through. Wednesday night Elder Shamo asked the assistants for permission to stay the night at the zone leaders home since all of his stuff was already over there and so we wouldn't have to wait for a bus to take us to the subway in the morning; the zone leaders live right above the subway. I didn't want to stay the night there because that meant I would have to sleep on the floor, but Elder Shamo got permission and he really wanted to stay the night there so we did. 

   Thursday morning we headed over to Broomall for transfers and Ed Jackson, a recent convert, traveled with us because he wanted to see how transfers worked. Ed is awesome, he's super funny. When we do transfers all the missionaries that are being transfer out of their ares stand on one side of the gym and the missionaries who are staying in their areas stand on the opposite side. Anyone else who came sits in the overflow. They call out the missionary who is staying to the center of the gym, then they call out the new companion to the center and Sister Anderson takes a picture. That's it. Ed was standing with all the missionaries who we're staying acting like he was ready to get assigned to an area. He was being loud and laughing, you could hear him all the way across the gym. Ed is awesome. I was sad seeing Elder Shamo standing on the opposite side of the gym from me. He was my favorite companion so far. I didn't want him to leave, but he was replaced. My new companion is Elder Pintor, also the new district leader. Elder Toilolo's new companion, and the new zone leader, is Elder Engleman, and Sister Beams' new companion is Sister Stephenson. We've replaced three missionaries in our district. After transfers were over and we were back home I took Elder Pintor around the Area to try and contact some people and do stop by's. Later our district was invited to go to Sister Rodgers' home for dinner. After dinner we had a member come out with us to a lesson that fell through so he volunteered to drive us around for the next hour, until we needed to be in, wherever we needed to go. 

   Friday, since transfers were postponed, we had district meeting and weekly planning. Something we started to do Friday nights is play basketball in the gym at the church with people we meet on the streets and some of the members and their friends. So far we get a good amount of people to come. Afterwords we give a spiritual thought, say a prayer and invite everyone to church. 

   Saturday morning we played football as usual. It snowed Saturday morning so we didn't get very many people out to play with us. Usually we play with a big group of people but not very many people wanted to play in the snow with us. Saturday we actually has two appointments hold. Our first appointment was with this guy named Derral. The lesson went super well but at the end he told us he doesn't want to join our church because he like's the church he's already in. We we're both extremely shocked when he said that. He doesn't want us to come back but we left him with a book of Mormon. He's a really cool guy but just doesn't want to change. All we can do is invite. Our other lesson was with Victoria. She has a lot of interest in the church. When we met with her, we went with a member, and we taught her about The Book of Mormon and answered all her questions. She downloaded the Gospel Library app on her phone before we left. She's been wanting to come to church with us for a while and she finally got a trans pass, so she told us she wanted us to travel to church with her Sunday morning too. After we met with her we made some stop by's and reminded several more people about church the next day. 

   Sunday morning Elder Pintor and I had to wake up at 5:30 so we could travel with Victoria on the bus. At 6:30, just after we walked out the door, she called us and told us not to come anymore because she didn't have anything to wear... We told her that she could wear whatever, she came up with some other excuse but we just went back inside and tried to keep each other awake until we had to catch the bus for church. Sunday night the Ala family invited our district over for dinner at their apartment. After we had dinner there we went do Mike and Dana's home and Elder Pintor got to meet Dana. As we walked home their house, several people came up to us and tried to sell us drugs. 

   Today for P-day, Elder Pintor needs to unpack all his stuff so we'll be doing that today. Elder Pintor is really cool, I like him. He's from Vegas and he's half Mexican half Indian. He's smaller than I am. From what I've been told and what I've seen so far, he's a good missionary. I'm glad he's my new companion. He trained Elder Bergman from my MTC district. I'm still getting to know him. He's been out for just over a year now. Over this next couple weeks, something we're going to work really hard on is finding a lot of new investigators. We meet new people every day but most, if not all, the people in our area know what we do. Everyone out here we talk to knows about us. Most of the people we talk to usually say something along the lines of "why can't I just love Jesus", but they still agree to let us teach them about the church. Half the time we get a real address and if we're lucky we get a working phone number. It's been a real challenge finding people who are truly interested lately. The time I've spent out here so far has gone by incredibly fast. "I know that which the Lord hath commanded me, and I glory in it. I do not glory of myself, but I glory in that which the Lord hath commanded me; yea and this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance; and this is my joy." -Alma 29:19

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