Tuesday 11/19- Had pday, played some basketball with Elder Leavitt. Bro Chistopherson, in our bishopric, took us to the locally famous Tommy Burger joint. Spent the evening tracking down HQ referrals, which we had a bunch of. 1 wasn't interested at all, one of them was a 12 year old whose mother we need to talk to before teaching (hopefully we can teach them both!), and the third was very interested but busy. However, we do have an appointment with her tonight, so that should be cool.
Wednesday- Spent most of Wednesday just trying to find people to preach to, which was made even longer because Cheryl cancelled on us. Long day, with lots of miles put on the bikes. We did finally meet the Spanish Elders whose area overlaps ours. Had a quick roadside correlation type meeting with them, which is very good for us and them.
Thursday- So the high school and middle school are right by the church building. Close to when school lets out the parking lot is rather full of nonmember types. We decided to take advantage of the easy tour invitation and tried to get people to come inside and see the building. We only got one, and that was just because she didn't believe us when we said we had a full-size basketball court in there. But hey, we got someone inside, and we invited as many people as we could to do so. Not much else we can do without them exercising their agency in favor of salvation. We also taught Virgil again, this time about Church attendance. You might remember that he is paralyzed on one side of his body. Anyways, as were talking, we discovered he's WAY more mobile than one would have guessed. And he committed to coming to church so long as the weather cooperated. He gets really sick when the weather is bad. We also taught Steve, who skipped out on Sacrament early last week. He's really eager to get the Melchizedek priesthood and to go to the temple, so we explained that if he wants that he's got to be at church every Sunday for a while. He also committed to church attendance.
Friday- Had a lesson with Cheryl, in which she basically dropped us. She just can't let go of herself, which is sad because she honestly doesn't have to change very much about herself to get baptized. Her time will come eventually. It is also a bummer because she was half our teaching pool, and the only one really in a position to get baptized soon. However, the Lord blessed us. That night we went to the house of a woman we contacted last Friday but haven't gotten a hold of since. Her husband answered, let us right in, and we taught him the Restoration. It was cool to watch his face change to actual amazement when we described the First Vision and the Restoration of the priesthood. His wife showed up towards the end and as so often happens to lessons that are going awesome things just sort of fizzled to an end, instead of having a real solid closing which is often essential for them to have understanding. But, they were super nice to us. They kept offering us food, they gave us a ride home, and told us to come back soon. They also said they would be at church Sunday morning.
Saturday- We contacted a lot of less actives today, which was cool. What was less cool is that most of them declared pretty resolutely that they weren't now members, never were, and never would be. Which is just strange because the church keeps pretty good records of who gets the saving ordinance of baptism. I mean, how else would we know their names, addresses, phone numbers, and birthdays? Which we pointed out to some, who still insisted there was some mistake. It's very sad to see how Satan causes people to forget their baptism with such finality as to render any discussion about coming back useless, because they insist that there is nothing to which they need return. Oh well. Those are the people who will have the most interesting experience in the after life in my opinion. Our dinner on Saturday was really good. We ate with the Twardecki's, who are Polish. Polish food is quite excellent, especially misery soup.
Sunday- The weather was beautiful, we followed up with everyone on Saturday, and still none of the four who promised to come showed up. I would've been happy with just one less-active, but oh well. Next week. Next week will be better. We went and visited two of the homes with people who didn't come, and after patiently hearing their reasons for failing to keep the sabbath day holy, recommitted them and set up appointments for this week. So we'll see how those go. I do still believe that they have real intent, Elder Leavitt and I just need to build their faith a little more.
Everyone take care and please continue praying for Becky Powell. She had an allergic reaction to the treatment and has been hospitalized for the last week and a half. Now they have to resort to an older, less effective, more painful mode of treatment. The whole family is in a rough place.
Elder Whitney
