April 21 Letter

Hello!

Well good streaks can only last so long out here, I guess. Haha we are
back to everyone not wanting to meet with us... Luckily yesterday went
really well and we had probably our best
teaching-pool-at-sacrament-meeting turnout yet. But, it was a long,
quite depressing week for a good chunk of it. I'll share the crappier
parts to start, so that I can end on a high note :) hahaha feel free
to just skip down to the pleasant parts if you so desire :)

We weren't able to meet with Randy, Shane, Cassandra, Debbie, Nona, or
a whole slew of other people at all. Luckily Randy and Debbie at least
were at least willing to keep in contact with us and let us know, and
Cassandra had given us the heads up. Still though. To make it better,
Nona kinda dropped us and a college student we'd tracted into gave us
the most demeaning drop I've ever had. Nona's "kinda drop" sounded a
lot more "full drop" on the phone, although it was a nonsensical
reasoning. We'd stopped by Monday night for an appointment we had set
with her, but she wasn't there. We left a card though, and she called
back, leaving a voicemail that said, "Sorry I wasn't there Monday, I
had an appointment that I had forgotten about. But, I'm not interested
in being a Mormon. I'm a Methodist and I go to the Baptist church here
in Avon." I don't know why a Methodist going to the Mormon church is
more illogical than a Methodist at the Baptist church, but whatever.
Luckily, when I called her to try to talk things over, she said she
didn't say we couldn't come back, just that she wasn't interested in
converting. So, we'll go over a few more times and hope the Spirit can
touch her someway or another.

Mike's drop was aggravating, though. We'd tracted into him a month or
so ago, and had a great chat on his porch. He said we could stop by
sometime and even gave us his phone number to coordinate it. We had
texted him once, and his response was "Hey sorry, big lab write up due
tomorrow." We told him good luck with the lab write up and let it be.
A few weeks later, we texted him to see if he was in town or home for
Spring break, to which he responded, "No sorry, already home!" Again,
no worries there. Well, this week we texted him to see if we could
swing by, and here's what we got THIS time: "I would appreciate it if
you didn't continue to take advantage of the fact that I'm too nice to
tell you guys I'm not interest. Please stop trying to conscript me to
your faith." Haha just look up the word conscript if you don't know
what it means. It was so irritating. Three interactions that all
seemed quite pleasant... and suddenly we are coercing people to follow
us by taking advantage of their weakness. If at doesn't make you
second-guess your interactions with every single person you talk with,
nothing will.

Aside from that, a huge chunk of the week was just spent driving to
person after person and having them not be home. Fun!

Now for he transition from crappy to semi crappy, and later will come the good.

The semi crappy is that we were able to meet with Jenn! Unfortunately,
it was on Friday because we got out to her house on Wednesday when we
normally meet with her to find out she wasn't there. But, we had a
great conversation with her mom, and came back Friday for the real
lesson. We decided that the Book of Mormon wasn't getting anywhere
with her because she wasn't giving it much effort. Maybe reading a
time or two a week, but that's all. In the two and a half weeks since
our last visit, she actually hadn't read at all. So we decided to
really emphasize church now. We came up with his dramatic lesson plan
with Elder Christofferson's talk and the new Because of Him video, a
discussion on the meaning of the Resurrection and the sacrament and
how church and the Restoration and everything draws us closer to him.
Then we were going to focus on it being Easter Sunday and hope she
would be inspired to come to church. Wellll, it fell pretty much
completely flat. Nothing about the videos phased her, she didn't have
any emotion in our conversation, and she didn't come to church. So now
we get the fun conversation as a companionship about how much longer
we teach her without her really putting in effort or even showing
enthusiasm until we have to spend our time elsewhere.

The other semi crappy involves Shane and Sandy. They both came to
church again this week for the second time in a row, which is great!
So, long time back he said we could start meeting towards the end of
March, right? So back then we tried getting in contact with him and he
wouldn't respond to anything, be it calls, texts, anything. So we'd
try to get in contact with him two or three times a week, until one
day he texted us "I know you have a job to do, but you guys are worse
than bill collectors!!!" I apologized (even though I still don't feel
like we were the least bit overbearing since a simple "sorry guys, I'm
still pretty busy" would have sufficed) and explained (truthfully)
that our phone is odd and a lot of times we can send texts that never
get to their destination. And, we got no response in return at all. So
we let it rest and didn't contact him for weeks and weeks. Last
Sunday, he was at church and talked to me saying he thought we could
meet that week and he would let us know. We texted him Tuesday to see
if he'd found a good time... no answer. We texted him Friday... no
answer. He was there at church again Sunday, and I swear it's like he
won't even acknowledge how much he's blowing us off. I would really
just like to be treated like a human sometimes, even if the only
response he can give is "Can't meet this week," at least give us the
dignity of a response, especially since we know from a member he is
close with that he definitely isn't one to never text back. Grrr...

But, let's move on to happier things! (Sorry if this email has been
depressing haha... It's been a depressing week, to be honest, so it is
only representative!)

The highlight, no doubt, was our attendance at sacrament meeting. We
had five investigators there, including Shane and Sandy. The most
exciting of those were Vinnie and Linnea! Vinnie decided with it being
Easter that he should go to church. Well, at the end of it, we went to
talk to him and the first thing he said is that he had decided he
wanted to get in the habit of coming regularly! Ha we're okay with
that!! So that was good. We also had our two recent converts we've
been working with there as well as an elderly less active couple who
came. (She even brought us special Easter chocolate just for the two
of us hahaha.)

Another high point was helping Dan paint a room of his for a good
chunk of two separate days. His health is just getting worse and
worse, which is really sad. Especially because he's a small business
owner alongside his pastoring, so every day he is feeling too sick
(which has been all of them for at least the past month) is a day his
shop is completely closed and that much closer to going out of
business. Sooo, all sorts of things are just piling up for him. But,
we were able to go and paint a room that he is transitioning into a
guest bedroom, which was actually pretty fun. He of course had us stay
for lunch both times and is just the nicest guy, so it was quite
enjoyable to spend so much time at his house, even in kind of sad
circumstances.

And finally, probably the biggest highlight, is kids are still always
nice to us haha. We spent a decent amount of time with Barbie again
this week, and Matthew (her two-year-old) and I have gotten closer and
closer. Haha he has developed a habit of walking over to me, standing
in my lap, then just falling on me and falling asleep almost instantly
while cuddling up to me haha. Then we have also developed a new game.
He isn't talking hardly at all yet, but is really good at pointing and
either grunting or doing a weird whine sound. I started imitating him
a few weeks ago, and now it has become a favorite game of ours, as you
can see from the attached video. Haha now he will come up and just
start it all on his own!