Exchanges and investigators

This last week was pretty rough. Our less actives, J and M C, have been moved to a hospital outside of our area, and now we can't visit them. We found that out when we went to visit Brother P, who was in the hospital because of water in his lungs. The diagnosis was because his blood sugar was extremely low, and so water had diffused into his lungs. When we visited him, he was fine. But now, he has suffered a mental issue akin to dementia, and has been moved to the Sharp's Mercy Hospital in Downtown. This was caused by a lack of oxygen reaching his brain. He is currently in a coma, and can only have four visitors per day. On top of that, G, a less active young man that we've been teaching and preparing to go on a mission, has gone to the emergency room because of some pain that he had in his abdomen. On top of that, several members have been sick with influenza and the cold.

On Friday, we had exchanges. I went to the Eastlake area with Elder T, and Elder B came into our area with Elder T. Elders B and T were able to find 4 new investigators in one day. Don't get me wrong, I'm overjoyed that we have four new investigators. But I can't help but wonder if maybe I'm the reason that we haven't found investigators lately. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, or if I'm even doing anything wrong. I've been praying and praying for the Lord to help us to find those that He has prepared, but to no avail. On top of that, J C, the man that asked us about the Church and believed everything we taught, has been deported to Mexico, and it will be very hard for him to return to the States. His wife is distraught because she now has to work to pay the rent for her family all by herself, and she doesn't have time to meet with us anymore.

On Saturday, we were able to take B S out with us to visit some people. We tried four different people, and none of them were there. We luckily had an appointment with J and C, so we took him to visit them. On the way, we tried to street contact a man that when he saw my nametag, blatantly told me that I was cursed for what I was doing, and walked away. I didn't think anything of it because I've gotten that before, but B looked a little shaken. We got to the lesson, and we taught them about prayer, and B shared a story along with his testimony. After the lesson, he asked us about what the man meant by us being cursed. I remembered when I was a greenie, and a man bible-bashed me and Elder T, and I remembered how that felt. I then explained to him that people just don't understand what we really represent, and that if they did, they wouldn't call us cursed. Elder T backed me up and gave him some sound advice and comforting words. When we got to his house, he told us that he could come out with us anytime we needed him. That following Sunday, he told us that his friend's mom was there at his house after we left, and that she asked him about the church, and desired a copy of the Book of Mormon. I gave him a copy, and congratulated him on doing member-missionary work.

S, a less-active that we've been reactivating, has decided to move to St. George to live with her aunt, and go to school. She's made a lot of progress since Elder W and I found her. And apparently there is going to be a California state-wide fast for rain because of the drought that's been going on. The Bretheren have asked for it, so we'll be fasting for that this Sunday.

SO. To contact people in the streets, I usually ask them if they've talked to missionaries before. So this girl was skipping down the sidewalk towards us, and she was short, so I figured "Skipping? Short? Must be in middle school. Nobody skips around in high school." When I contacted her and asked her if she'd talked to missionaries before, I froze and stared at her face. MAN, lemme tell you, there was NOT MUCH NECKLINE. My law of Chastity instincts were sending up red flags all over. Holy crap, it was so bad. I just kept staring at her face, keeping direct eye contact to avoid...y'know. In fact, the aversion of my vision distracted me, and I asked her AGAIN if she'd ever talked to missionaries. Makin' a fool out of myself. Whatever.

Other than that, not much has happened this week. I wish there were more, but this has just been a rough week for me. I'll be fine, though. We'll be doing a lot of street contacting this week, and we'll hopefully find some service to do.

In answer to one of Dad's questions, the only service that we've been able to render has been to clean up a car-mechanic's junk-yard, put up and take down a member's Christmas lights, clean up some parks, remove graffiti, and helping an investigator sweep her sidewalk. Other than that, people are pretty codo (stingy) about letting you help them.

Stay warm!

-Love, Elder Crook

Lots of street contacting this week

This last week we stopped by the hospital to visit ANOTHER member that was there because he had water in his lungs. His name's Brother P, he's around 65 years old, and he's a pessimist. They were giving him a stimulant that would cause the water to diffuse back into his blood stream. The best thing is that Brother S, this other member that's 40 years old, is his best friend. They just sit there and go off at each other, and it's the funniest thing. This one time, on the way back from a meeting, Bro. S asks us what "frog" is in english. And so we explained this to him, and Bro. P asks us why we're talking about frogs. Then Bro. S says to him "Por que? Porque eres un frog." (Why? Because YOU'RE a frog.) And Bro. P doesn't understand what's going on, nor the English word for "frog", and mumbles something about how people have conversations without him. Then Bro. S says to "Deal with it, viejo." They're always calling each other names, and just generally going at it with the jokes.

We decided that since we aren't adding many investigators, that we would count the number of people that we talked to during the day, and average it at the end of the week, to give us an idea of how hard we're working. We averaged it at 25 people per day. We've been tanking at the talking to people, and my confidence level in street contacting has gone way up. We also talked to this DRUNK guy that stopped going to our church because he thinks that patriarchal blessings are soothsayer hoodoo, and says "WOAH man. Thatsfutrff's jus' not fur meh. Y'know what'm sayin'? Yeah. TURkies. IN the middle of the yard. You can't get 'em from the city. And then like 15 girls were pulling their shirts down, and they robbed this guy. What do you call that?"  (Me-"Uh...unscrupulous?")  "Yeah. Eahsrmsrtuerajrdkcmreh."  And then after that we just kind of walked away. But whatever. That's pretty much the average day for us. That and getting jeered at people driving by.

We also met this old lady that has no teeth, and has short term memory loss or something. She kept inviting us into her house, but we can't go in unless there's a man over 18 years old. And there was no man. She must've invited us around 20 times. My companion lost all patience with her, and made me talk to her alone. Then she offered us beer and wine. Then we left with a cookie instead of beer or wine.

OH YEAH. This less active member of ours, (female and 23 years old) has been having boyfriend troubles for the last 3 months, and my companion and I have been giving her the spiritual support, (and church invitations) that she's needed. Her boyfriend was treating her like trash, but she's been with him for the last 4 years, and so she's been going back and forth between letting him come back, and never letting him come back. Then, at one point, (I think it was last Sunday) she gave a crush-letter to Elder T. Later that day, she asked if he'd read it, and he said that missionaries don't worry about stuff like that on their missions. Her boyfriend saw that text, and got mad and slapped her. (He has bipolar disorder). She then went home, crying. She said that he came to her apartment on Monday night, and demanded that she let him in, (angrily), and after a bunch of crap, she called the cops on him. He went to jail, has been charged with domestic violence, and is now on parole, and she is now in St. George with her aunt for the week, and may move out there if she likes it there. So yeah. Buncha fun stuff this week.

Other than that, we've slowly been losing investigators. D has been found, but is being moved to a rehabilitation facility in Lemon Grove. Another of our investigators doesn't have time to meet with us. And as I already mentioned, we're talking to around 25 people per day, (excepting P-day). We've been praying and fasting that the Lord will bless us with solid investigators, but so far, we've just been hitting a wall. I really hate just walking around and trying to find people to talk to. It feels like a waste of time to me, and I wish we could find the people that would listen to us. We had an almost miracle this week. B S, Hno. S's son, had some neighbors that he wanted us to visit. We didn't know where or who they were, and so he takes us to their house, and knocks. He then proceeds to door-contact his neighbors, explaining that what we teach is the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that our message can help them to be happier. The neighbor told us to come by the next day. And so on the next day, we knocked on their door, (without B), and the neighbor flat out told us that he wasn't interested. The best part is that B is only 13 years old. Blew my mind.

We were also able to find S, and we had a lesson with him the other day. He's very in tune with the Spirit, and believes that we have been sent by the Lord to gather His sheep. (Quite the testimony from a non-member, eh?). We've invited him to read the Book of Mormon, but he hasn't started yet. We're planning on teaching about why the book is so important, as well as what is contained therein.

Not much has happened other than those things. It's been a pretty slow week. Those're just the little highlights that took up around 15 minutes out of our day. Other than that, it's been slow.

-Love, Elder Crook

Working hard

J and C have returned from their vacation, and we're still unsure if they want to be baptized or not. I think we'll have to have a lesson on that with them. For the most part, they just enjoy our company, and love the Spirit that they can feel when we teach. The rest of our investigators are...doing alright. We tried to see several of them yesterday, but were unable to find them or contact them. D, who has a baptismal date for the 1st of February, has disappeared. We saw him last Wednesday, and neither we, nor his mother, have seen him since. His brother's girlfriend had a miscarriage, and both his brother and his mom were yelling a lot, and so he got out of there. But he went to the bar, and got drunk after 2 years of staying away from alcohol. So now we're wondering what to do in order to find him. Other than that, we've had a week of talking and talking and talking. Elder T and I totalled and averaged the number of people contacted and talked to during an average day was around 25 people contacted per day. We've only been able to set up 2 return appointments. Things are just going a bit slow here. But we're keepin' on.

This week for P-day, we had planned to go bowling as a zone, but I think that all of the sister missionaries in our district are rejecting the idea and going to Ocean Beach this week. Or at least that's what they said at church on Sunday. We had zone meeting last Friday, and it turns out that at the Mission Leadership Council (the Jedi Council), Elder Ballard made a surprise visit. The numbers for the mission during December were horrible by comparison to the rest of the year. Elder Ballard came and taught the leaders of the mission about the things we needed to do. After that, we started street contacting everyone we came across, and that's where the 25 people a day average came from (because we figured we would count that). I'm really hoping that we'll be able to find the people that the Lord has prepared during this next transfer.

I was kind of hoping to have more to say, but there really isn't much to say, other than the fact that a less active member has a crush on Elder T. Oh dear...

And it has been the influenza here as well. We had to go give a blessing to an entire family on Saturday night because they were all sick except for the father. He had us stand in to help with the blessings. Other than that, I've been feeling pretty healthy. No sickies for me. And my bottle of hand sanitizer exploded in my pocket and leaked out when I wasn't aware. So that pocket is now very clean indeed.

OOH. Something funny did happen, actually. We contacted this guy on the street who had a pretty bad neck beard. We started talking to him, and he said that he just knew too much, because he had a major in psychology. Said he hadn't done any felonies or shot himself up, and he hasn't done drugs since '99. He then told us about how people should just obey the 2 commandments. Obey the Guy in charge, and don't mess around with other people. He then told us about how he was probably the only person in the universe with a neck beard. Said it was a good conversation piece. He then told me that I should be in a toothpaste commercial. Then as we were walking away, he says "I hope you win the lottery." So. Fun contacting stories.

Have a great week!

-Love, Elder Crook

Staying in Chula Vista

This is last week's email (January 7, 2014):

As far as transfers go, I'm staying in Chula Vista for another 6 weeks, unless something comes up. And I'm actually quite happy about it. I was thinking to myself last night that I wouldn't want to leave Chula Vista on a bad note, (bad note being rough times finding investigators). We actually have three elderly members in the hospital right now, one of which is M L. She has arrhythmia as well as diabetes, which is a bad combo, especially with her age. We spent around 2 hours in the hospital visiting people yesterday. The other two are J and M C. J has pneumonia, and has been in the hospital for around a month. His wife has been there by his side for that entire month. So right now isn't the best time for people. On top of that, Hna. G has influenza, and A C (M L's daughter) has influenza as well.

The other day, we went to a less active member's house to have a lesson with him. His name's G, and he's been less active because of his parents. Apparently, when he was 13, his mom just decided that they didn't need to go to church anymore. But he's been wanting to attend church, and serve a mission. And so the other day, we went over to have a lesson with him, and his friend C was there. C was actually really curious about what we believed as Mormons, and asked us quite bluntly about what a Mormon is. We taught the Restoration, and talked about how Jesus Christ is the core and foundation of the Church, and that through Joseph Smith, the authority that Christ gave to His Apostles was restored to the earth. After we'd taught the lesson, he said,"No offense, but to be honest, I had no idea that this is what you believed. I took you guys for granted. I had no idea that you were Christians." He then asked us some good questions, and after that, we planned on coming back to see G during the week. So hopefully C will be there as well.

But I guess the thing that has got me down the most, is that I'm afraid of wasting the Lord's time that He's given me. When we're walking around on the streets hoping that someone will be there for us to find, I feel that I'm wasting the opportunity that He's given me to be a missionary. I feel as though I'm using His time well when I'm teaching lessons and following through on appointments. And so as we've had an investigator drought, I've just been down on myself because I feel like I'm failing Him. But as I've looked back on the numbers, I realized that our lessons with less active members, as well as less actives at church, has been exponentially higher than when I was with Elder W. We've had three less active members come back to church consecutively for the last month, and so I guess that I've still been able to fulfill the Lord's will. I hope and pray that the Lord will guide me and bless me with His wisdom.

Well, that's about all I had for this week. Sorry if it's a bit short. Thank you for sending the hoodies! They were sorely needed (for morning studies in a cold apartment). I hope you all have a great week! Until next Tuesday,

Oh yeah. And tell my sisters that I found "Where the Sidewalk Ends".

-Love, Elder Crook