Week 2 - Reality

Mon 8/17/2015 1:45 PM

Post on the blog that I don't have too much time for emails today and just help everyone understand. I'm going to try to get one to mom and Matthew and Michelle here soon. But this will be basically the only update for now.

Week 2 8/10/15-8/16/15

Monday/ Tuesday

There was a shooting Monday night in our apt complex. Supposedly. Beat Bro Hall (ward mission leader, way cool guy!) in ping pong Tuesday night. Contacted a lot of people Monday night, it was way good.

Received quite a few referrals from a southern baptist lady. None of them wanted to hear the Gospel though. Pday Monday was good. Went the the institute building at Lamar University and played pool and ping pong and piano. And we emailed home. Tuesday was kinda slow, our only appt had to cancel on us, but we rescheduled for Wednesday night. We will see how it goes, her name is Natalie. Our district leader, Elder Udall, has been really emphasizing being exactly obedient and I've been trying my best. I've decided that I'm just going to log everyday and send the log home in an email... No one says I can't update my notes at meal times and just send it home on pdays.

Wednesday

Woke up, hard to get up this morning. It was a rough day yesterday.

Can't stop thinking about home, I hate it! But it's all good. I'm still dedicated and willing to,give everything that I have to the Lord. Reading Jesus the Christ by James E Talmage, it's really good and I would recommend it to almost anyone who is willing to read it with a dictionary by their side.

The priesthood has been restored, we have that binding power here on the earth. Behold, a marvelous work and wonder shall come forth among the children of men. This scripture is referring to the restoration of the church and priesthood. However, it also pertains to missionary work.

Just helped the Daily's move. The Daily's are a nice old couple that live about a mile away from us, we were in the area yesterday and decided to go visit cause we felt that we needed to. Lo and behold, they were trying to move everything in their house by themselves, so we told them to save it for today when we could actually go over to their house and help in pday clothes. And we ended up getting a heck of a ton of furniture for our empty apt. I have my own desk now. And we got a dresser and a bunch of end tables. Going to help put a roof on a shed now... Crazy stuff

The roof was crazy, I have pics. We raised the thing 14 1/2 ft off the ground with 2x4s... Too much fun! Lots of hard work and heavy lifting.

We've had pizza from members 3 nights in a row and I'm sick of it. But I'm glad that we get to hang out with members every night for a few minutes. It's good to get to know the members; I never realized how important the members are to missionary work. Got back to the apartment and decided that the light switch is too far away. So we took some thread and some duct tape, cause that's all we had, and attached the thread to the light switch and ran it across the ceiling then down and let it dangle above our desks. Then I tied a pencil onto my "light switch" and it looks like there is a pencil floating in the air. Now we can turn the lights on without getting up and walking across the entire room:)

Natalie is legit. She's amazing! She is a single mom caring for 4 children by working 2 jobs, one in the,day and the other at night. While running them around everywhere to their various activities. Her 16 year old son plays the trumpet in the band. Natalie is super receptive to everything that we are saying and teaching her.

That's it for me! I'm going to bed

Thursday

Last night there was a major thunderstorm... It rained all night long.

And thundered even longer than that. There was a lightning bolt that must have hit in our backyard cause it woke me and my comp up at the same time. About 1:00 in the morning... Shook the entire complex.

After we had gone back to bed, my comp woke me up at 3:00 and told me to get out of bed and get ready for the day. After a few minutes of convincing, I convinced him that it was still nighttime and that we are supposed to be sleeping when the sun is sleeping... Funny stuff right there. It was an eventful night, I didn't sleep to much more after that cause the thunder was still going crazy.

We spent the better part of the day in weekly planning and trying to set up appointments. We didn't get out of our apartment until 3:30.

And then we were on bikes until now, 8:00. We came back to eat before an appointment at 8:30. She just called and canceled on us... That's the fourth time we've had appointments cancel on us since Tuesday.

That's why we went tracting. We've been knocking doors and contacting people in parks and other public places on our bikes. Crazy stuff. And crazy people, but they're so nice! Everybody wants to get us some water or something. Then they tell us they're catholic or some form of baptist... Southern Baptists are Mormons without realizing it. It's great! Other Baptists aren't so nice to Mormons, but they are great people, make sense? Making hash browns for dinner tonight, then drying off. Biking in the rain isn't any different than biking not in the rain, either way you are soaking wet and feel like you're drowning. We have a nightly come-home-find-food-and-lay-on-the-floor-cause-we-don't-have-furniture-and-dry-out-party.

Fun stuff:)

Friday

Slept well last night... Elder Leftwich is super sore from yesterday though, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't hurt. We rode for a long time yesterday. We have a district meeting here in a few minutes, it'll be our first real meeting. These are supposed to be good for the

soul...;)

District meeting was fantastic. Everything we talked about in meeting today Elder Leftwich and I talked about yesterday in comp study. Truly inspired stuff. We are "in charge" of the ward game-night tonight. Each of us have to give a 2-3 minute lesson or so in each room. My topic is temples. I'm going to talk a little bit about eternal families. Should be pretty good!

Game night went great! We had a lot of inactive or non members there!

We were able to introduce ourselves and bear our testimonies, as well as interact with the members. I never realized how much missionaries rely on the members and their referrals. Not just the referrals, but we are trying to take a member with us to almost every lesson that we have and their testimonies are such a powerful tool in conversion!

It's like the Spirit is instantly brought into the room. It honestly feels like a Spiritual Overflow! Way cool.

As we were on our way inside, there were some guys outside, waiting for the people in the apartment above ours to show up. Apparently it was to be a big party. But they all thought Mormons were way cool!

They've all got their alcohol and such (not drunk yet, they were saving it for later...) apparently they have a friend that is an Ex-Mormon and they like him and they've gone to church once or twice with him back in the day. They said everybody was way nice to them and that they would protect us missionaries! They also said that we really needed to go inside, cause it was 9:00 at night and Beaumont gets kinda scary and they wanted us to be safe. Then they started talking about how they aren't interested in the church, but they do think it's members are awesome! You don't get that very much, it's usually all either hate or anti or indifference to us. They said they admired us for having the courage to knock on doors all day long;) then they said that we could,go to,their party if we wanted! We kindly told them no but thanks anyways! So they got pictures with us and sent it to their ex Mormon friend! Nice guys, but didn't know anything about us. Kept saying we were xoxox cool guys... No matter how much they admired us, they didn't learn too much from their friend...;)

Saturday

Well last night was eventful. Not really... But neither of us could sleep very well last night night. So yep. We spent all morning this morning trying to plan what we want to teach today. But we keep getting interrupted by sirens. We've heard more police cars and fire trucks go by the complex this morning than we've heard in the last two weeks combined. Friday is definitely the party night in Beaumont...

We spent all afternoon contracting in the rain and such. Knocking on doors, talking to people on the streets.just meeting people.

Found a single mom named xoxox. She's the one we've been praying to find. She had a baptismal date last year and called the missionaries the day before and told them that her grandmother was not approving.

Her grandmother raised her so it makes sense that she would want to save that relationship. We believe that she is somebody we were sent here to find this transfer. It's crazy. We sat down and had an hour and a half lesson earlier tonight. She just kept asking questions after questions. Super cool. And we lined up an appointment to meet with her grandmother too. We will see how that goes. I'll keep you updated though!

Sunday

Had to get up extra early today to catch a 7:00 meeting at the church.

Should be an interesting meeting. I don't know what it's going to be about, but it's a meeting. We don't have any investigators coming to church today that we know of. All of them have commitments or are out of town and such like that... Sad day.

Busy day today. We've got an appointment later tonight. And we have dinner later tonight too. The appointment later tonight is a guy that came to church today and has been going for a few months now. Hasn't ever met with the missionaries, but he wants to take the discussions.

Just came straight up to us today and said when can I start!? So crazy huh!? We are going to meet with him tonight. His name is xoxox and with him it's not a question of if he will be baptized but a question of when. He's an awesome guy! He works for Vivent down here and he's crazy busy everyday. So we can't meet with him till next Sunday again.

But we did set up an appointment to spend a few hours with him next Sunday to answer all his questions! He also said that he's going to read the entire BoM... Not by next Sunday, but sometime in the future.

Just finished the book of Genesis! I've started to read the Bible.

Just to say that I've read it. I started it Friday.

-Elder Allen