Shalom, shalom! Shalom aleichem
Well... To be honest this week was rough, we have some very solid
investigators and a handful of less active members who are actually
interested in sitting down with us and learning. Buuuut, we didn't
meet with any of them this week. Debbie cancelled. We had to cancel on
Jenn because of a crazy blizzard. Randy's work is picking up and he
isn't answering his phone. Shane doesn't answer his phone. Cassandra
was sleeping all afternoon and didn't want to meet in the evening on
Sunday. Crap, it's irritating! We don't want to go finding tons of new
people to teach with all these solid people because then we are
overloaded, but when this happens we instead have nothing to do. It's
aggravating.
But, so that this whole letter doesn't turn into a mean-spirited rant,
let me tell you about a few cool things that did happen haha.
First, one cool story took place when we were trying to figure out
something to do in the 30-40 minutes before a dinner appointment. A
month or so ago, we'd tracted nearby where we were and left a girl a
Book of Mormon, so I figured we'd swing by there and see if she'd had
a chance to read from it. We parked and were walking that direction,
when we passed a lady shoveling her car out of the snow. (Seriously,
on Tuesday it was 55 degrees and wonderful; on Wednesday it was 10 and
we wound up with nearly a foot of snow. To make it worse, the plow had
pushed all the snow from the road against her van.) We at first asked
if she had any more shovels that we could help her with, and when she
said she didn't I told her that I guess I would just have to use hers.
After a little convincing, she finally gave in. As I shoveled, we
talked. Pretty much out of nowhere, she said, "I used to have a
'Mormon Bible.'" She went on to explain that she used to live in
Macedon (just 3-4 miles out of Palmyra) and went to the Hill Cumorah
and Pageant multiple times. She attends a baptist church somewhere
around, and has since lost the Book of Mormon, but she - again,
essentially out of nowhere - said, "I live in apartment one right
here, if you ever wanted to stop by." Haha that doesn't happen too
much to us missionaries.
We also had dinner with Dan, the pastor who is friends with our ward
mission leader. He went all out! Full on turkey dinner. Ha it was
great! Now we're going back over there tomorrow morning to clean out
his garage. We don't really know what that is going to entail... but
hopefully it turns out all right.
Speaking of meals. I have gotten fed more this transfer than my entire
mission. Here I am trying to be almost-normal-weight again before I go
home... and so everyone starts shoveling in food. A member made us
Cafe Rio burritos, we've had huge roast beef dinners, pizza beyond
belief, it's just nuts. This week for the first time of my mission
with the exception of the week surrounding Christmas, we have a meal
five days in a row, and that isn't taking into account that we had a
meal the past two days. So seven days straight, I'm going to be so fat
by the end of this.
Ha, this week, again speaking of food, we celebrated the second
birthday of the quadruplets that I've told you about. Haha Sister
Larsen decided that she wants them all to feel special, so she made
each of them their own cake. SO MUCH CAKE. Ha but it was a pretty cool
situation to be in, because they had their whole family there. That
includes a member of the stake presidency, two stake high councilors,
at least two part member families, and a whole bunch of less active
members. Unfortunately, we probably didn't capitalize on it nearly as
much as we could have/should have. Haha my companion is pretty awkward
around anyone he doesn't know, let alone 30 people he doesn't know, so
he was pretty anxious to leave the second our hour of dinner time was
over. But, oh well, family gatherings probably aren't the best
preaching opportunities anyways.
But yeah, this week will be an interesting one. We'll have to figure
out who to keep persisting with to meet and who to lay off. Shane just
texted us, "I know you have a job to do, but you're worse than the
bill collectors!!" Yeah, we called him twice yesterday, and texted him
three or four times throughout the week, but that is our only time
calling... and he never responded to us to let us even know if he'd
been getting our messages. Haha I tried to settle down that situation
a bit, but yet again he didn't respond to our actual question...
Missionary work is remarkably more frustrating when you don't even
have contact with the people you are trying to work with.
On the bright side, we are DEFINITELY doing better at getting to know
members this transfer. Between meal appointments and more stopping in
on members to say hi and leave a bit of a thought, things are going
good there. Haha I guess I imagined it would have a more positive
correlation with the direction of the work... But I guess that is not
the case Haha.
But... I probably oughtta get going.
I love you, but I don't miss you!
Elder Allen
P.s. Randy just called us and DIDNT chew us out for trying to get in
touch with him all week! Yayyyy!
No comments:
Post a Comment