Dear Familia,
It was so nice to read your letters mom and dad, thank you for writing me. That's cool that your making steve's old room into dad's office, that'll be more quiet, I bet dad can focus ton's more down there, and mom, thank you for sharing that experience with me, that's awesome, we're all called to share this message to the world so keep being a missionary when you have those opportunities, the Lord puts people in our path, so we need to open our mouths! and I was surprised when you said your friend didn't like the mormon.org commercials. We actually just got the new mormon.org pass-along card's this past week and I love em', and mormon.org advertising has actually been really effective, a lot of people we contact say that they've seen our commercials and it helps us put our foot in their door. Tell steve he better start writing me, and yes he can send emails, all family members can, and my zone leader said it would be fine if some other close friends did too, so kelsey can email me too. but I don't get all the time in the world to email, so don't write me chapter books, but I love hearing from you, and the emails I got today were the perfect length.
Alright, I guess I'll start with Monday, last monday after I emailed we went to the church building in our area and played some bball. Something I don't think I told you is that we have two other sets up Elders that are so close to our area that they are assigned to the same ward as us, Memphis 1st Ward. Even though it's technically out of their area. So we actually have 8 Elders in our ward including myself, its kinda crazy, but it's nice. So all 8 of us played ball for like 4 hours last P-Day. We recently found out we're not allowed to do that any more because president is worried that it will get too competetive, which it kinda does. My trainer was upset about that, lol, but he's getting over it. So idk what we're gonna do today, board games or something. P-Day officially ends at like 6 pm so after basketball we got cleaned up and ate dinner and then went and saw some RCLA's (recent converts and less actives) and had some lessons with them and that was pretty much Monday in a nutshell. We saw Antonio and Monique, lol, they're really cool, they're less active, and I think it's just because they refuse to wake up for church. We taught them the plan of salvation in depth because they weren't familiar with it. I told Monique the world was going to be cleansed by fire and she was freaking out about that, she said she didn't want to get burned, it was silly. They have 5 little ghetto black kids, they're awesome, lol.
The week days kind of all blend together, mom asked what we do during a normal day, so I'll go through a normal day for Elder Badger and I. We always have our days planned to the brim and they look super legit, but nothing ever goes as planned. we wake up and get cleaned up and do personal and companion study, and we usually head out right at 10:00. This week unfortunately was our bike week, and it was freezing butt cold. We decided to walk everywhere this week, because biking would have made it more cold and it's just easier to contact when your walking. So Elder Peay and Elder Lester, our house buddies, would drop us off at the church every morning and we'd start walking to whereever it was we needed to go. We have tons of potential inverstiagtors and tons of actual investigators that we've already taught the first lesson, but nobody is awake or will even think about opening the door until after lunch, so usually we just try to contact from 10-12, which involves a lot of tracting. We've had some succesful experiences with tracting already, but usually no one even answers the door. When you knock on doors in Frayser, you'll hear some black woman from inside the house yell "WHO ISI" and then Elder Badger will yell "THE MISSIONARIES", then she'll yell back "WHO?" -"THE MISSIONARIES" -"WHO?" -"CHURCH PEOPLE" and then she'll come to the door and say they got their own church but they can always use the good word, so they'll schedule an appointment later in the week, then we'll come back and no one will answer. That's how tracting works here. But like I said we've been on bike week all week, so all we do is walk, all day long.
After lunch we'll walk to our appointments, and we have yet to have a return appointment follow through, except with Brother Gallaway. We'll get lucky every once in a while and someone will let us come in right away. We met a man named Brother Gallaway, he's baptist and he loves his savior. We mentioned Jesus Christ at the door approach and he waved us inside and told us to take a seat. He was wearing a shirt that says Jesus saves. He's awesome I love Brother Gallaway, we taught him the restoration, and after the lesson he told us he knew what we said was true. So I extended a baptismal commit, and he said he might, if god leads him in that direction. we've been working with him a lot, and reading B.O.M chapters with him, he just says he can't leave his church because god has called him to teach the children in his church, but he wont deny what we've told him is true. So he's progressing, and he always lets us in, he's a great guy.
We met a man named Shonni a couple days ago, he looked like a thug, and thats because he was, lol, but he was nice to us. We started talking about god, and he told us pretty much all about his life, and stories he had growing up in a gang. He said he was a kitchen Cript (sp?) I think. It was hard to hear wht he was saying for sure, but he said he was an O.G. (I think that means original gangsta) and so he had a lot of respect inside this gang and he was like one of the oldest thugs in it. He told us how he had 2 murder charges previously and how he can buy a pound of weed really cheap because he was an O.G. but he started talking about how he's trying to help his brotha's in the gang change thier ways, and he wants to use this authority to help people, idk exactly, but he had a good heart deep down. We talked to him on his porch in the snow for like 30 minutes, and he finally let us inside and we taught him the first lesson. It went awesome. I extended a baptisimal date to work towards and he said he didn't know if he could change his life enough to commit to baptism. We told him to pray about it and he said he would. Either way he was a nice guy who's been through a lot, it was cool talking with him, and he said he's gonna read the B.O.M. We'll stop by again to see him this week.
We have 8 batismal dates set right now, they're set for the 12th of February. 3 girls around there 20's named Kierra, Chasity, and Julie, seem pretty solid and they loved the first lesson, Kierra actually went to church yesterday with her little girl, who is 5 years old I think, so they sat with us, but they actually left halfway through sacrament. I dont know why, but hopefully we'll be able to get back in to her home and teach her, we had an appointment with the 3 of them last night, but they didn't let us in :( we called and stopped by twice, but no luck. We have another date with an older woman who seems like she's avoiding us, and then a family we met a few days ago that we have an appointment with later in the week, so we'll see how that goes. We're working hard, but missionary work is not easy, we need to get more people to church, but they won't wake up. We stop by all our inverstigators homes an hour before church to wake them up, but nobody wakes up, Kierra has been the only one.
One thing that's really awesome, we have been getting dinner appointments like crazy, we have had like 6 in a row and the next like 8 days are already filled up, it's awesome.
I love you, I love hearing from you so make sure and write me emails before next monday, and make sure you commit steve to writing me, telling him to just send me an email every sunday night, because I miss him a lot. You're in my prayers, pray for my investigators.
Elder LeBaron
ps. I remembered something else, can someone send me josh's letters? and brady's? I'm pretty posotive dear elder works, it just gets sent to the mission office and then to me, so see if you can do that, if it's too hard though then that okay.
pss. something interesting happened in church yesterday, we were sitting in class and sister Cherry was teaching us, and this sister next to me just starting telling everyone how she had seen demons, and they came to her when she was in the hospital, and something about yellow demon juice getting on her, and she asked if anyone else had seen demons. She was freaking out, I think she's a new convert. Either way, it was extremely strange and i'm glad none of my investigators were there.
pss. this is just something I think is funny, whenever you ask anyone what Christ did when he was on the earth they say the same thing, and im not even joking " Jesus, well you know, he woke me up this mornin! he put clothes on my back and shoes on my feet!" and then we go through Christ's earthly ministry with them. lol, but a lot of people just say the exact same things, and I wonder where they got it from.
No comments:
Post a Comment