Teaching, teaching and more teaching

We started this week off really well last Wednesday with 6 lessons throughout the day. I feel like that was quite the feat since three of them were with investigators, and we didn't have set appointments to visit them. We started off by visiting some less-active members, and were able to get more familiar with them and were able to talk about a lot of good things, including our favorite foods. :3 I just love talking about food. We then went to try and find some investigators. We then went and visited some members in the same complex, and went to try and find some less-active members that live in our area that we didn't know about. We didn't really find any of them at home. We then went and tried an investigator couple that has a problem with gambling, and when we showed up, they asked why we hadn't come around in awhile, because they had hoped that we would have come sooner in the week or the week before. We explained that we'd tried to find them at home a few times, but that they plum just weren't there. They said that it was probably because of work, and we sat down to teach them. I started out just connecting the need for a Savior to the reason for the which we missionaries walk around all day talking to people. We talked about the Book of Mormon, and the importance of it in the entire scheme of things. By the end of the lesson, they basically committed themselves to read and pray. We then went to visit R., and showed the Restoration video. He really liked it. We then went to try some less-actives, and went to see L. with the S. family. They weren't able to meet with us, so we set another appointment, and went to visit K., an active member nearby. We walked in, and he asked us a question about how to avoid procrastination. We started talking, and then M., U., and B., three other members, walked in. Then the whole visit just got hilarious. They got into a little tussle about "My horse is bigger than your horse." with regards to soccer or videogames. The whole time, Elder Y. and I are busting up laughing.

Thursday, we went and did some mormon.org time to start things off. I sat in the wrong seat, because the people that sat next to me were pretty...strange. First it was a black guy that was drunk out of his mind, and he was watching music videos from the 80's, and really getting into it. He'd be sitting there going, "Eh-yeah yeah yeah YAYAH yeah.", and I'd be sitting there smelling the alcohol on his breath. EUGH. Then, he left and this girl came and sat down at that computer. And her boyfriend was standing REALLY close to her right behind her chair, practically smelling her hair.. (Heh. That rhymed.) He was breathing REALLY LOUDLY, and that weirded me out. So I finished up and got off the computer, and went to wait for Elder Y. to finish, since he started his time after I did. Then this guy walks up to me and asks, "Hey. Are you a J-dub?" "No." "Oh. GOOD.", and then he walks away. O_o Wasn't quite sure what happened. We then went and had lunch, did some weekly planning, and went to visit some less-actives who ended up not being home. We then went and had dinner with some members, and went to visit a less-active guy who doesn't come to church because of dialysis treatments every Sunday. He has a new puppy that's only about a month old, and he was very attentive to that little thing. He commented that his wife accused him of taking better care of the puppy than he had for his own kids. We shared a message about hope, and went home.

On Friday, we had zone meeting. We showed up, we got down to business, set some goals, (and actually set them well!), and moved on to some training. A couple of English Elders posed as a couple of hillbilly investigators, and the zone leaders tried to teach them the Restoration. It went everywhere, from "Man. I feel good inside right naow, Gunther." "You gettin' them butterflies, Phil?" "Yup. I got them butterflies in mah belleh." "Well...what kind is they? Are they monarchs?" "What?" "Is they big butterflahs, or little ones?" "They's little ones." "Oh. Them's is moths."   And so forth. And it ended with talking about Father in Heaven, and the last question was, "Well, what's his address then?" Oh man. It was so funny. I had such a hoot. We then had lunch with the district, (even though I wanted to have lunch with some of the English Elders). Oh well. We then went and had dinner with the R., and had a good lesson with them and their two daughters. We then went and taught L. about the temple, and temple marriage. We then invited her to be baptized again, and she said that she'd already been baptized. Thankfully, Hno. S. was there to help out. He talked about the necessity of having proper authority to baptize, and we testified that she could know for herself if God's authority really was restored. She said that she would pray about it.

Saturday, we went riding around town trying to find less-active members, and didn't have much success in finding them. We then went to visit a part-member family, and helped them to get their tablet all organized. Gosh. I'm really far behind when it comes to new technology. Seriously. This tablet was super tricky to figure out. I had no idea what I was doing, and Elder Y. pretty much fixed the problem all by himself. We then visited the J. family, and talked with him for a bit, and he told us that he wanted to baptize his daughter soon, since she just turned 8. We shared a message, and went to visit some other less-actives. (We have a lot of less-actives, so that's pretty much the back-up plan if something falls through.) We then went to coordination, and there were a lot of branch missionaries there. We got the help needed, and went to visit a less-active that we'd met the other day. His name's A., and he's a huge music buff. He's a photographer for bands, so he gets a lot of cool stuff, and gave us autographed pictures of Young the Giant, a pretty popular band. One of the missionaries in the zone is really into music, so I gave him my autographed picture.

For Sunday, we went to branch council, set up some chairs, had sacrament meeting, went to the classes, had lunch, did our studies at the church to save miles, and went to our area to do some work before dinner with some members near the church. The members had to cancel last minute, so we went to our area and tried to find people at home. The members then swung by and left us some carne asada with tortillas, cilantro, onions, and tomatoes, and said sorry for cancelling. We ate, and went to find some referrals. We got to the complex of one, and this little old lady comes over and starts talking to us. She tells us about all of the people in the complex, and said that we could try knocking on any of the doors that we wanted to. She's the apartment manager, and we offered that if at any time she needed help cleaning up the place, that we'd sure be happy to help. She thanked us and said that if we ever wanted to say hi to just knock on her door. The referral then buffed us, (we could see them inside, and they could see us. I made awkward eye contact with a guy on the couch.), so we left and contacted another referral that actually wasn't the person that lived in the apartment number that they gave us. We turned in for the night, and started exchanges with the other Elders.

Yesterday went really well, as I was put with Elder C., a newer missionary, and we had a pretty great day. We started out with a few investigators early in the morning, taught some lessons, and went back for lunch. We were napping during lunch, when we got a call from the Sisters saying that a member needed some emergency service moving some couches. So we did some superhero clothes changing action, and sped over to help them with their couches. They didn't need us right then, so we went and helped the English Elders with some service helping a lady that hoards tons of stuff. We then went back to help with the couches, and were able to get them sent over to another member's house. We moved a bunch of couches around, and they had around 4 couches in their living room by the end of it, set up in a theater-type organization. We then went to dinner with those members that we'd moved the couches for, and ate some delicious lasagna with salad, a rotisserie chicken, and some Italian bread. We then went and exchanged back.

Now for today, the plan was to go to the temple, but the other Elders had "something come up", so we'll have to wait until next week. :'( But anywho, that's just about all that's happened this week. We haven't really had anything crazy happen to us, (like it usually does).

Have a great week! And happy Valentines Day! (More like "Happy Make-Everything-Awkward-for-the-Missionaries Day".)

-Love, Elder Crook