Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Jan. 21 Letter

Hello!
 
My mocking of your weather bit back this week. It's really cold... and really wet. Ha I read something once, though, that said that in the winter, missionaries should go outside smiling. That way, when your face freezes solid, at least it's in a smile.
 
Anyways, 'twas a good week.
 
Probably the highlight was last night, when President Christianson held a fireside right in our branch. I could go ahead and just dictate everything that he said here, but instead, he essentially talked about his own testimony and how everything we do should point to "pleasing the Master" because our wounded souls can only be healed through Him. Cooler than what he told us, though, was who he told it to. Krissa came, which was good but kind of expected. Who was really exciting to see was Matt!! I think his pride probably won't let him just come to us and be like "Elders, I want to take the lessons now, too." But what we do hope will happen is that he'll lighten his heart a little bit about the church. Hopefully he'll accompany Krissa to church again in the near future, maybe even sit in on a Book of Mormon reading somewhere. I don't know for sure what will happen, but that is the first religious thing he's ever agreed to do with us, so we are very stoked!
 
Also there was Ashley, who we taught once... about five months ago. She is actually Nate Owens' girlfriend (he just left on his mission to Mesa), and I taught her once while on splits with him, but at the time we had it set up as a "practice." Practices are funny, because we ask her all the same questions we would ask an investigator and she answers them the same way she would if she were an investigator, then we extended an invitation which she committed to and even followed through on. Essentially, we taught her the Restoration without her even knowing it. Anyways, Nate has been working with her since that point, and had her promise to come to President's fireside. Well, we have our second appointment scheduled for this Wednesday!
 
On Wednesday, we (finally) met with Amy again. It had been a few weeks since our last visit, which really doesn't work, especially when you struggle keeping committments anyways. We'd left her with Alma 5 to read... which she actually meant to read! But instead she thought we'd said Alma 25, which would make no sense to her without context. So we read Alma 5 with her. It's a really cool chapter, because it just asks question after question after question about our own conversions, so it's really easy to just turn each of these questions to your investigator (or yourself). We had a really good conversation about her own responsibility in her conversion, and how it wasn't all on us. In the end, we committed her to pray about a specific baptismal date that we left her. Hopefully she follows through on that AND meets with us again this week!
 
On Saturday, we picked up a way funny new investigator. He was a referral from a member of the branch, but it's been tough to meet with him, because he has two homes: one in our area, one in a different area. But we finally met with him and had an AWESOME first lesson. He's had a very tough life, with some very heavy drinking that has completely destroyed his liver. Every few weeks, he actually has to have the toxins pumped out of his body, because he gets so loopy. He told us a way funny story actually. Apparently when the toxins build up, he loses brain functionality. So a couple months ago, his mom hadn't heard from him in a few days, so she went over to make sure he was still alive. When he came to the door, he was butt naked. "Um, Scott... you don't have any clothes on," she told him. He thought about it a little bit, then said, pointing to the dog, "Well neither does he!" Haha he is hilarious! But really, he agrees with us on almost everything building up the Restoration as far as the importance of prophets and the Great Apostasy goes. Then he agreed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it so that he can know if the Restoration really did occur through Joseph Smith. He's read the Bible, the Qu'ran, and all sorts of other books, so I think he will definitely read and study the Book of Mormon. I'm very excited about our next appointment on Thursday, assuming his hospital treatments go okay today.
 
Well, I'm just at the church using the computer that the whole zone shares, so I probably need to cut this email short. Oh, real quick, I forgot to tell you that we are planning on Amanda's baptism this Sunday afternoon! I'll definitely talk about that one more next week.
 
I love you, but I don't miss you!
Elder Allen

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