Monday, June 2, 2014

June 2 Letter

Hello!

Well, the week was fairly tame until yesterday morning! We got a call
from President at about 7:45 saying that an elder up in Palmyra had to
go home for health reasons, and so Elder Hales, who serves in the
other half the ward, was being transferred up there. As such, his
companion, Elder Russon, is now in a trio with us and we are covering
both areas. Haha luckily, neither of our areas were fully busy... But
now, combined, we will be VERY busy! It'll be cool though. They have a
handful of really solid investigators right now, including two
daughters of a recently reactivated lady who both want to get baptized
soon, so I'm stoked about that! Ultimately, I think the biggest strain
this will put on us is on miles for the car...but hopefully we'll be
able to wing a few rides here and there and possibly round up a bike
or two, and then things should be good.

It will have interesting implications for our district as well, since
it only consisted of our two areas. Now we are going to be put with
Warsaw and Batavia, in a district that will now have seven elders and
two separate senior couples. Thankfully, I'm not going to be district
leader. Haha while I love giving the trainings at district meeting and
whatnot, I hate exchanges. And with seven elders... That's a lot of
exchanges.

 It's also fun because, at least temporarily, we have two apartments!
So last night we slept in Nunda's apartment, and tonight we will be
back in ours. Fun!

Really though, it should be a good thing. Most of the more gung-ho
members live down in Nunda so it will be nice to have them in our
area. Then, with their investigators, we will be quite busy.

As far as the rest of the week, let me see if I can wrangle up a few
good stories here and there.

We met up with Mallard and Diane early on in the week. They are some
of the nicest people, but sometimes I want to shake them! Haha they go
on and on and on about how whenever they need help or think about us,
we just show up or give them a call. As such, Diane now calls us her
angels haha. But yet they keep saying "God must be sending you!"
without really listening to what we are saying as though we were sent
from God. Haha we will talk for a while, and then Mallard will go on
some sort of a born-again rant for thirty minutes. What is funny about
it is that he isn't doing it in argumentation, but almost in
agreement... even if he is saying isn't really agreeing with what we
are teaching. But, eventually, he does start adopting things we have
taught into his rants. For instance, when he tried to explain the
trinity this time, he ended up comparing it to a husband and wife -
one, but very separate. Ha, so we hope that if we teach truth over and
over for long enough, it will eventually sink in and just become his
beliefs.

Oh yeah! We had our lesson with Shane! It went very well again! It was
interesting to see the difference in our focus, though. Last time,
he'd been coming to church weekly for two or three months, so we
focused primarily on baptism. This time, he hadn't been to church for
a good two months, and so a lot of our focus was on coming to church.
He has quite legitimately been swamped with work, working at least 40
hours a week in two separate jobs. He says he pretty much wakes up,
goes to work, comes home, goes on a bike ride with his daughter, eats
a little dinner, and goes to bed, every day. But, he says he would
like to start meeting up at least every other week now, so that's
exciting! Hopefully we'll get him back to church soon, too!

I also got ahold of Jimmy. So a little while after his baptism, he
baptized his girlfriend and her kids. Well, since then, they broke up
and apparently things are pretty awkward between the two of them,
hence why he hasn't been making it to church. The proposed solution by
Warsaw's branch president is for him to just attend church in the next
closest unit: Geneseo! He wasn't there this week, but is planning on
coming next week!

Well, I officially am done one month from today. Haha all I can think
about is a little "loading" bar on a computer that says "96%
complete." Haha the odd part about that, is depending on the download,
the last 5-10% either zooms through after a slow as crap middle 70%,
OR it zooms up this this point, and then the last 5% takes an extra
half hour. I'm hoping for the latter. I've thought a lot about trying
to find a 3 Nephites loophole, where I can just stay out here forever.
Unfortunately, I haven't found it in the white handbook yet... but I'm
gonna keep looking! Haha

Yesterday, I taught the gospel doctrine class. The lesson was about he
Book of Ruth. To be honest, I have read it once, but got nothing out
of it... But this time I went through and it was so cool! So in Ruth
1:16-17 it is clear that Ruth is a convert. Still, she stays very
dedicated, not just to her mother-in-law, but also to Jehovah. When
her husband dies and her mother-in-law starts to head back to
Jerusalem, she is very adamant that she is not going to go back to her
old lifestyle. She then does really crappy work out in the fields,
essentially living off of a Jewish form of welfare services. When the
owner of the field, Boaz, asks her about herself, she seems really
just stunned that anyone even noticed what she was doing. Boaz assures
her that not only has he noticed, but the Lord has as well and He will
pay her back for all her efforts. Later down the line, she marries
Boaz, to the joy of her mother-in-law, and together they have a child
who is the grandfather to King David and therefore an ancestor of the
Savior's. To make it even more interesting, Boaz is referred to as her
"kinsman" which is a translation from the word go'el.
A go'el in Jewish law was the next of kin to a woman's husband who
would marry her and help her stay on her feet and protect her if she
was widowed. It was a way of restoring her back to her former status
and helping her have seed. What makes this SUPER interesting though is
that later on, the messianic prophets used go'el to refer to Jesus,
and the King James translators translated the word to Redeemer. See,
the Redeemer restores us back to our former status with god, and
allows us to carry on eternal "seed." So, in the end, who was it that
noticed Ruth's diligence in serving and keeping her covenants? Her own
go'el, or Redeemer! Pretty neat, eh?

Well, that's all for now, folks!

I love you, but I don't miss you!
Elder Allen

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