Ben

Ben

Week 7 9/14/15-9/20/15

Monday
Pday is like a national holiday. Not really but still... Transfers are today. Crazy, huh!? I've been out an entire transfer. It's a little bit wacko. It's gone by so dang fast. We had dinner tonight with R, our recent convert. He made us gumbo and it's the first time I've actually had gumbo. It's kinda strange and it's like nothing I've ever eaten before, but it's good! Actually it was really good.

Tuesday
Well we started out the day by knocking doors. Or that's what we had planned... On the way we were stopped by a preacher at a truck stop. (I didn't know they had those...) he started challenging our beliefs a little bit and after listening to him rant for about 15 minutes we asked him if he wanted a Book of Mormon. You should've seen the look on his face! He not so kindly told us no so we shared our testimonies and moved on, cause you know, we can't be wasting the Lords time on people like that...;) well we got to the area that we wanted to knock and started knocking. The first guy that answered was strongly anti, because he'd attended the Calvary Baptist church a few times. Apparently they show anti movies and stuff in their services. Who does that!? Anyway, he essentially told us to get lost and that he didn't want to stoop so low as to get into an argument over who was right and who was wrong... So we asked if he wanted a Book of Mormon and he "kindly" told us to leave. The next house was an older lady who came to the door and asked us what we wanted. We told her we were the missionaries and that started he on how she was Calvary Baptist and how she knew we weren't going to heaven cause we worshipped some guy who rewrote the Bible. We tried to correct her, but it didn't work so well. So we bore our testimonies and moved on, cause some people are just so stubborn that nothing you can say or do will bring the Spirit into their lives. It's sad really. Next house, guess what!? Calvary Baptist, aka Anti people who tell us we are too far gone to even try to save. And so it goes on for a few more houses. It was fun, love contention. And we offered a Book of Mormon to each person. We met some weird people today... Pentecostal who was convinced that speaking in tongues is not of the devil, pregnant lady who told us her life story, and then a guy who actually wanted a Book of Mormon! He is a super cool guy who was raised Pentecostal, but after he turned 18 started visiting all the churches he could. He knew that they're had to be more. So we had a good discussion about what "more" he was looking for. We are going to go back and teach him more!

Wednesday
Well today we didn't do much cause we had an appointment with a lady that taught us the entire plan of salvation... She talked a lot, but it was good! We were able to teach her a little bit about the restoration. Little bits here and there. It turned into a two and a half hour lesson. I invited her to be baptized and she kindly said no... But she's awesome and we are going to keep meeting with her and trying to get her into the fold. 

Tonight was a lot more anti... Heavenly Father is testing us. One house after another. This is the first real opposition that I've run into down here. 

Thursday
Today we had weekly planning. Weekly planning in the first week of the transfer is where we try to come up with our transfer goals. We also make specific goals to get people to church. We filled out an entire whiteboard with people's names and what we can do to help them. We knocked a street today with a member named Ian, I think I may have mentioned him a few weeks ago. He's the one going to Hong Kong on his mission. Anyway, surprise surprise! More anti. More doors slammed. More people telling us to go away. It's super tough to face it. But what can you do? Work harder, move on to the next house and so on. And offer them the gospel each time. Smile at them. Tell them to have a nice day. Just be like Christ would be. Because He is our strength and our guide, and we are representatives sent to assist Him in this great work. 

Friday
We had zone meeting today! It was amazing! It was all about working with the ward and how we can better work with the Ward Council. I was able to learn so much and so was everybody else! So yep, bottom line, it was amazing!

We went out contacting (again, cause all our appts fell through, again) more opposition. We met a lot of people, but nobody was really interested. (Again.) That's about how the day went...

Sorry for not much detail on the last few days, but we haven't seen or done much other than gotten told to get off people's porches...

Saturday
This morning started with a Ward Correlation Meeting (yet another of the never ending meeting circle of the life of a missionary) with our Ward Mission Leader. He's such a cool guy! I've told yall about him and how's he coached football for many years. 

After that, more contacting. Still nothing solid. It's gets old hearing the same thing over and over. You know, the whole I'm Baptist and that book can't be true. 

They don't know what truth is. I do. We do. And we have come to share it with them that reject us. All day. Day after day. 

The day ended after we had knocked for quite a few hours, and skipped dinner. We wanted to find somebody. Didn't matter who it was. We just wanted to find someone that would listen to us. We were kind of dejected. We had knocked from 1 till dark or so cause all the lessons we had lined up canceled. We didn't teach any doorstep lessons. Everybody just told us to get off their porch. Or they would listen for a while, we would talk to them and then they would say they weren't interested. Come about 8:00 we finally decided to head home for some dinner, cause obviously we weren't having any success knocking or talking to people. We should've given up round 4, but decided to stick with it. So we started to head home. We were biking through some back roads so we could ride side by side and talk about the day. We turn the corner and there were a few kids outside. We stopped and started talking to them. Gradually more and more kids came and started talking and asking questions about religion. We sat down on some guys driveway and had an hour long lesson/Q and A session with about 5 kids aged from 10-18. Come to find out, they all go to Calvary Baptist Church... But they were so cool and they wanted to learn. And we could answer their questions! The Spirit was definitely guiding our answers. It was a really cool experience and I'm grateful that we had it. The biggest obstacle in baptizing these kids will be the fact that their parents are anti. We will see what happens.

Sunday
Church today was amazing! The talks were so good and the Spirit was super strong! I wish we could've had any investigator there. We invited so many different people and none of them came. We did everything that we could to get people to church, but none of them came. It was kind of sad

For lunch I made pancakes for a few of us elders. We had invited the Beaumont South Elders over for lunch and I fed them all pancakes. Seriously, we have pancakes like once a day. I'm getting super good at making them. Not to brag or anything...;) thanks mom! We really like pancakes. Instant mix is like our greatest friend ever. The whole "Just Add Water" thing really makes me excited! 

We had an awesome lesson tonight. It was probably the best lesson we've taught. We had never met the person that we were teaching and an hour later, she wanted to be baptized. Simple as that. But we might have to give her to the YSA Missionaries, cause she's about that age. We had a member there with us, Brother DeMoss and I'll tell you, members bring the spirit stronger than missionaries. Without fail every time. The members testimonies are more powerful and effective than our testimonies as full time missionaries. I don't know what it is, but I'd rather have members teach than have us teach, cause the Spirit that is brought is so great and powerful. All yall are missionaries. We are just the full time ones. Live your life in such a way as to be an example to others so as to invite discussion about religion. Recognize opportunities when they arise and take them. You never know what can happen.


-Elder Allen

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