Hiya Fam!
Think Jingle Bells:
Ringing Bells, Ringing Bells, Ringing bells all day! (Door bells!)
The truth is, we've done barely any
chapping this week! It's been a great week! :)
On Wednesday, we were talking to
people in the street, when we stopped a man named J B. His father is in the
hospital, can't remember what for. He was on his way to visit him, but he said
that if his father is all right, he could meet with us at 4:30! We had St at
4:30, but he was fine with moving our appointment. More on St later. J was
good! We taught him the Restoration, and he said it made sense! It was
different in some parts from what he believed, but he did commit to reading the
Book of Mormon and praying about it as well as baptism! There really was only
one minor hiccup: He's gay. But once he gains a testimony of the truthfulness
of the Book of Mormon, I'm sure it won't be a problem.
We were also meant to teach H that
night, but he wasn't in. Bummer.
Thursday was nice and busy. It was
raining quite hard, so we decided to do our Weekly Planning then. It was fun
because during our Lunch break we started watching Meet the Mormons, which I
haven't seen. I think it's pretty good. It really is a string of I'm A Mormon
videos, but still good. Later that day, we were with Y, and we talked with her
a bit about the Holy Ghost and watched Elder Eyring's talk from this last
General Conference. That night we met with the S's, a member family from
America! The S's were at the Thanksgiving dinner. They've got four kids: H, J,
and two little girls whose names escape me. The Dad is Less Active. We shared
with them the Christmas video, and we all committed to do one of those papers
saying "He was born so I _____" You know those? We had a nice dinner
with them too.
Friday was a long day of Finding,
but it was all GQing. It was good. We had an appointment, but the guy didn't
show up. Why do people give you their numbers, tell you they'll meet up with
you, and then never respond and never show up? It doesn't make any sense. But
that night we had dinner with the R's. Their son just returned from a mission
to France. They're Spanish.
On Saturday morning we were with the
G's again. We almost finished their fence. We were going to share a message,
but it had taken too long. We set up an appointment later in the week though!
That evening we also had a lesson with W, the LA brother of a member. Again, he
wasn't there.
On Sunday we were disappointed when
St didn't come to church. He slept in. :/ Still, T came! We also had another
lesson with another potential, but he didn't show. We weren't totally surprised
about that one, because we think he was high when we spoke with him. We also
had a Dinner Appointment that was cancelled because the family was sick. I
think, all total, we had six appointments fall through. Not a great record. But
hey, so long as we did our part, that's what matters, right?
Okay, so onto more happy topics!! St
is a BOSS!! We have him with a Baptismal Date of December 30th. We both fasted
for him yesterday. We met with him 5 times this week! The first time was at the
J's with A. I think I mentioned her on Tuesday. We didn't see her later in the
week, but we will this week. The next two times was on the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. He doesn't seem to grasp what Sin is. He has the belief that when bad
people do bad things that they don't think it's bad. Which is probably true!
But sin isn't so much about how we feel, so much as how God feels. But anyways,
the fourth time was on the Word of Wisdom. Unfortunately, he has a problem with
the Word of Wisdom. But it's not what you think.
He doesn't like verse 16. More
specifically, he doesn't like the first thing it mentions.
That's right. He doesn't believe
that Grain is actually good for you.
Probably the first and only time
I'll ever hear that one!!
So St has a problem. He's very
curious about things. But he doesn't like to read. More specifically, he
doesn't like to read books. He's fine with online articles. Which he does look
up extensively. He hasn't looked up anti-Mormon stuff, thank goodness, but he
does believe a lot of what he reads. Kind of like B from Inverness. You
remember him?
Anyways, St believes that one of the
worst things you can eat is Gluten. It gives you all these diseases, it gives
you cancer, yadda yadda yadda. He also doesn't like most of today's food in
general because of herbicides and all sorts of stuff. But he did admit that
even though he knows it's bad, he still eats it anyways. So the Word of Wisdom
really won't be a problem for him, in reality. I just thought that was an
interesting problem.
We met with him again on Sunday and
talked about the commandments, and we finally committed him to baptism. Earlier
in the week we committed him to read from the Book of Mormon and to pray about
it. He said he would, but for various reasons he hasn't. But he finally got it
on his tablet, so hopefully that'll help. He'll be busy with work this week, so
we're not sure how many times we'll get to meet with him. Some prayers on his
behalf would be great! He's not sure if he believes in God, and the more we try
to press him on that point, he gets more aggressive about it.
Another thing to mention, President
Donaldson has set a goal for the mission that we are to get 40 baptisms in
December, and he's set a few new strict rules to reach that. One of them is
that we are never to leave our areas (except for All Ireland this Wednesday).
This means no exchanges for December. I'm sure the only exceptions are for
Baptismal interviews as well. But yeah! It's cool!
We
shared this with several members: Enos 1:12. It outlines the three steps to
receive revelation, miracles, whatever we desire from the Lord: 1: We must pray
for it. You'll never get anything without asking. 2: We must "labor with
all diligence". I love the quote that says "When you pray to move
mountains, don't be surprised when the Lord hands you a shovel!" 3: We
must have faith that the Lord will grant according to our desires.
So part of our Christmas day time is
to be sent doing some form of service. I was thinking of spending it baking
some cookies for our neighbors. Or maybe a cake. Just something. I was
wondering if you have any recipes for some delicious cookies? I'm not entirely
sure what we have, but we do have an oven!
Oh and if you have any other ideas
for service, I'd love to hear it.
President
Thompson committed us to make our own Scripture Chain at Elder Ballard's visit.
You pick a topic, and then go from one scripture to another to form all you can
about that topic. So I decided to do that.
All the scriptures are about the Savior and all the scriptures are from
the Book of Mormon. I'll send it to you!
Anyways have a great week! Enjoy the
Christmas season! :)
Love,
Elder Bates
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