9 February 2015

okey dokey, sooo i forgot my journal at the house.... this week will be a little smaller, but i can still remember a lot of the big points!! on Tuesday we went on exchanges with the ZLs and i went to Med Hat with Elder Alpentista. We did some tracting and had money given to us for dinner. but what super cool about tracting, is that toward the end, we found this older guy. we told him who we were and that we wanted to share a message about Jesus Christ. he was like "well i have to go pretty soon, but you guys can come in and talk for a bit." it was the first time anyone's ever let me in!! so we went in and talked with him a bunch. he is a super christian and friendly guy. he goes to the church of Christ. we talked about the BOM and how we have a latter day prophet, just like in the bible. he said he doesn't really believe in anything other than the bible and he doesn't think there is a prophet on the earth today. we told him and bore testimony about how if he reads the BOM and really wants to know if it is another testament of Jesus Christ and was translated by a prophet of the lord, if he truly wants to know, God will answer him. he also said he has a strong testimony in prayer and that God answers our prayers, so I'm hoping elder Alpentista tells me if they make any progress with that guy because he seemed super solid!! so we gave him a BOM and as we were leaving and still talking a bit about it, his grandson came down and was like "mom already has one of those." and the guy (willie is his name i think) goes "yeah well i want my own.." like seriously, why can't i find someone like that in brooks?? haha and then like 2 houses down, we met a guy who used to hang out with the missionaries all the time, and he like remembered a bunch of their names and we got his number and stuff!! so they'll probably start hanging out with him again, and i hope that goes somewhere good... Also, this week, how i said i wanted to start being more effective and stuff, i started going through the area book in hopes of being able to clean it out, because it's like super full and outdated. but I'm going through calling all the "previous investigators", and seeing who might be interested now or still is maybe. i got a hold of like 2 out of the like 50 numbers i called. one was this black lady named Mercy, and i asked her if she might be interested in picking back up lessons, and she said we could drop by the same time the next day!! we tried and couldn't find her both times we dropped by. we called her a couple times too and she didn't pick up, so we'll try a few more times and if we still don't have any success, we'll just update her sheet and drop it. but one lady we called was an investigator last year, and she owns a local cupcake shop. she answered like immediately, and was super flippin nice!!! we ended up talking for like 20 minutes because she recently went through a divorce with some Muslim guy and she has custody of the 5 kids, and he keeps fighting her for custody, but there's like a bunch of people who will see and approach her and tell her how lousy her ex is and they hope she wins and they can get stuff on him, but she said how she doesn't want to get dirt on him and make him look bad, which is what he's doing. she just wants the truth to be known and win fairly. she also talked about how the kids will call her when they're with him for the week or whatever, and they're like crying or upset and miss her or something, and he's trying to make it so the kids can't call because it's supposed to be his time. but we talked a lot and it went really well and i was able to relate in a lot of ways since i went through kinda the same thing. but she said how she doesn't understand how she can be so calm when all this is happening. and she can really feel God helping her out and comforting her trough all this and she can feel people's prayers helping her in her life. but she was really sweet and super nice, and seems like she would honestly get baptized easily because she already has such a strong testimony in God's love for us and stuff. we won't be able to meet her this week because it's Valentines week and she'll be busy, but she said definitely next week, so I'm really looking forward to meeting her in person. and apparently, like everyone at church knows her, and when we brought her up in ward council, they all knew who she was and said how she was just super busy, so that's why she had to be dropped as an investigator. Not much else happened this week that is too exciting, but yesterday i got to have breakfast for dinner with the Blummels!!! haha they're like the flippin coolest family I've met in the mission!! which is pretty cray, considering that like this entire ward is so cool and inviting and super duper friendly and stuff. i really am blessed to have been put in such an awesome ward, even if it means i don't speak very much Spanish... at all haha. but i know the Lord is looking out for me, and if we strive to follow his example in our everyday lives, he will bless us all. i love you guys and hope you're all doing great! enjoy y'all's week and I'll write you again next Monday!! Un Brazo. Elder Levi Windham this is the huge mound of snow piled up in the church parking lot. someone dug a hole in the side of it and it was flippin cool!! haha when we were playing pool with the ZLs before exchanges, i had a stick and was standing it up and just like let it go and it didn't even move!! it was pretty legit :P then that's all the food we got from the food bank thursday when we worked there!!!