Transfer calls happened, and Elder Y. is getting moved out.
I'll admit, I'm a little disappointed, because I had secretly hoped to
have another transfer with Elder Y. He's been so easy to get along
with, so the work has been easy to do. But we'll
see how the Lord shakes things up this time around. Along with Elder
Y., Sister G. and Elder C. are both leaving, so the
district got rattled this time around.
Last
Wednesday, we had some really good time outside contacting. We walked
around a lot, and biked a lot, and weren't really able to find people
that were at home to teach. For some reason the other Elders wanted to
use our bikes, so we used their car for a bit. We went and visited the
C.'s, and they were just on their way out. We went to see another
family, and they weren't home. After stopping by several places, we
parked, and went to contact some guys working. One was somewhat
interested, but the other just wanted to bash, so we left. Our dinner
cancelled, and we went to visit a less-active. He asked us if we'd
eaten, we said no, and he gave us some food. We got our bikes back,
visited some less-actives later on in the night, and called it a day.
Thursday,
we did our weekly planning, and afterwards, went to see some less
actives. We had a recent convert, J., come with us to see a
less-active family that's all girls. We got there, and waited awhile
until he met up with us. We then visited the family and got to know
several of the members. We then went and tried to find some people at
home, but they weren't, so we went and tried to find some people to talk
to. No such luck was ours, so we went to dinner. After dinner, we tried
to find some less-active members home, but nobody had time, so we spent
the rest of the night walking around trying to find people to talk to.
Friday
rolled around, and we had district lunch and district meeting. I don't
know why, but I had the munchies the whole day. We got a full order of
carne asada fries for lunch, and I devoured it. Usually Elder Y. can
eat much faster and much more than I can, but for some reason, I flew
through the carne asada fries, and he couldn't finish it. We then
visited the C.'s again, and had a good lesson with them. We then
went to help Hno. S. to put up the chairs and tables at the church
for a branch party. Another member who was giving us food later that
night, decided to feed us right when we got to the church, so he whisked
us away to his house. We ate there again, and he returned us to the
church, where we set up the chairs and tables, and went back to our
area. We went to see if U., a returned missionary, could come with us
to a lesson with L. We got there and she wasn't there. We haven't
seen her in the last 2 weeks, and we're not sure what's been going on.
We got her number, and are going to contact her soon. We then went to
see another investigator that wasn't home, and visited M. and R.
They decided to get us a pizza, and while we ate, we talked a lot about
M.'s mission. He's coming back from inactivity, and we're pretty
sure that he's feeling good about it.
On
Saturday, we talked to a lot of people in the street, and for some
reason, the whole day was just weird. We started out having to bike to
Wal-Mart for some toilet paper, and that whole day, it rained like mad
right when we got back to our apartment. We talked to some really weird
people in the streets, and I got yelled at by this Arabic guy. Elder
Y. rode past him first, said hi, and the guy grunted at him. I
passed him, said hello, and he flipped out. He just went off screaming
that he didn't speak English, to go away, and to stop following him.
Scared the living daylights out of me. We rode across the street and he
kept yelling until we were about a block away. We also ran into some
other people that we'd already talked to, and had some good contacts. We
didn't really have much success as far as adding investigators, but we
had a really good day of contacting. We had dinner with U., and we
shared a good message with him and K.'s family. K. said some
things that worried us a bit, so we decided to stop by the next day to
talk to just him. We then went to the Saturday Evening session of Stake
Conference with Elder Paul D. M. Christensen of the Fifth Quorum of the
Seventy. He was a very animated and enthusiastic man. Big booming voice,
a big smile, and he was quite entertaining. He was able to bring the
Spirit in really powerfully, and started his remarks off by bearing
testimony of the divine mission of mothers. One of my favorite things he
said is,"You mothers aren't going to get promoted to a higher calling.
Know why? Because there are none." And he talked a bit about Heavenly
Mother and Her love for us. I felt quite inspired and spiritually
uplifted.
Sunday morning. It had rained all
night long, and rained the whole day Sunday. We again had a session of
Stake Conference, and the stake presidency talked. They gave some good
remarks about the importance of our efforts in reactivation, in raising
the children of the church in the right ways, and some other things that
pertain to the duties of the members. Elder Christensen then got up and
told a story about when he was a Boy Scout leader, and how his troop
had wanted to go on a canoeing trip. He decided to show them how to
whitewater canoe. He went through the story, telling about how he taught
the boys everything they needed to know about the strokes, safety
procedures, rescue tactics, and other important factors about whitewater
rapids. He picked a river for the troop, and ran it by himself the
first time a few weeks in advance, to map out eddies, and other
obstacles to avoid. When he took the boys there, he gave them the
instruction to follow his canoe exactly. For the first two groups of
rapids, they did. For the third set, they didn't, and after a curve in
the river, there was a log jam. He knew it was there, and went to avoid
it, but the boys didn't follow, and got caught by the river, and were
pulled right into the log jam. He had seen them deviating, and
immediately pulled over, got out of his canoe, and stood on the log jam,
waiting. The boys hit the jam, he pulled them out of their canoe, and a
few seconds later, the canoe disappeared under the jam, and they never
got it back. The next canoe hit a dead-head, or a log that's protruding
from the river floor. He pulled those scouts out, and their canoe
cracked in half. He then talked about how imperative it is that we
follow our leaders, especially the Prophet and Apostles. We visited
K. later that night, and shared a message about the temple, and
talked about the importance of scripture reading and family prayer. We
then visited a few other members, and went home for the night.
Yesterday,
we had an eventful morning, as we heard some thunder, and the rain came
pouring down for the third day straight. Right as we went out do work,
the rain let up a bit. We went and tried to see M. and R. again,
but they were busy, so we walked and walked and walked the whole day
long, because we didn't want to bike in the rain. We talked to this guy
named D., and he was actually really interested in the Word of
Wisdom and the Law of Chastity. He's 22, and he said that everything
that we had said just made sense. We gave him a Book of Mormon, and gave
him the address to the El Cajon chapel that was a few blocks away.
After that, we tried contacting referrals, we tried to find our
investigators home to teach them, we talked to a black guy called B. J. from Arkansas, and weren't really able to find anyone
home to teach. We walked so much yesterday, my feet hurt.
Well,
I'm just about out of things to write. And my head feels like I just
whirled through a month and a half in less than a week. We've got some
cool things happening in our area this week, so I'm really hoping that
we'll be able to find some new investigators soon.
Don't
have too much fun in the snow!
-Love, Elder Crook
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