Our last week was one for the books, a great one on the Lord's part. It seemed that our every action was guided by the Lord. I am happy to be a part of this great and marvelous latter-day work!
They were predicting the worst ice storm of the decade, but it missed us by about 20-30 miles. We woke up and our car was covered in ice, but it wasn't bad. Up where we go to church though, tree branches were snapping and everything was covered in ice.
Here is a photo of the twisted beauty of the deadly storm (grainy quality thanks to point-and-shoot photography)
Not nearly as bad as the 2007 ice storm up here, apparently. We had power, only a flicker once.
We had some pretty cool experiences this week.
We have been trying really hard to find more people to teach.
We found some different people through different finding methods. We had met a lady with Elder Bayles while tracting. She was nice, took a copy of the Book of Mormon, and said we could come back sometime. She gave us her number. We tried following up a couple of weeks later, but it was unsuccessful. Then, earlier this week we had finished some appointments and I was just thinking. I remembered her. I gave her a call, and she had been reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and pondering it. She wanted to talk. We go back this evening to meet her again!
Another guy we found was pretty cool. We made some Bible flyers (I probably told you last week) but we are doing some DIY media referrals. Normally, we wait for people to click on advertisements online requesting a Bible, but I got tired of waiting. So I made some flyers and we have been putting them up on bulletin boards all over town and in laundromats and in apartment laundry rooms. We had our first call (which made all of the work worth it) and we got to meet a nice man named Kirtis. He had lived a hard life, and was in the process of quitting smoking. We told him we had a program to help him. We also gave a copy of the Book of Mormon with our Bible.
And then the last (and coolest) of the stories this week.
We were looking in our former investigator list and found a family that had been taught a lot, really well fellowshipped by the ward, and had a LOT of people there. So we went and checked it out.
We'll call them "La Familia Grande" just to reference them. Every Sunday, Kika (the grandmother) and Jaime (the grandfather) get all of their 5 kids and many grandkids together under one roof. They love the missionaries, and were happy to see us. We had a lesson with 12 adults, all of whom participated. They were interested in the gospel and in learning English. Just having that many people in a room is more than all of the spanish members in this area- almost too good to be true. They are a really good family, and we plan on visiting them weekly.
Other cool experiences include meeting Tom and Yvonne. Tom was outside picking up sticks that had fallen in the ice storm. He's an older man, bald, a pretty goofy guy. He started talking to us in the street, and then it was 10 minutes later and then we were inside his house and then he introduced us to Yvonne, his wife who taught school and then realized that it would be important to learn Spanish, so she did. She was impressed by our spanish and we talked with her about learning spanish for a long time. Tom was very excited about sales and politics. He loved talking to us about it, but we didn't give very much away (not allowed to talk about it). They were super nice, and I gave them my email and phone number. We gave Yvonne a Book of Mormon in Spanish. It was cool. They really liked me, like a lot. It was weird. Like I knew these people for 35-40 minutes, and they were just really attached. I felt like a grandchild again haha
Anyways, It was a really good week.
We learned in our Zone Traning meeting about "The List." Elder Lynn G. Robbins came to our mission and instructed on a lot of good stuff. He was an executive at Franklin Covey before he was a general authority, and gave lots of good advice about how to be successful. It really just confirmed a lot of things to me.
Things that I have been working on like gossiping less, working harder, procrastinating less, etc. I came to the following conclusion:
We are told in all of our classes, studies, etc. to fight the natural man, even to kill him. It is a lifelong approach. However, what we are less apt at is identifying what he looks like, or perhaps just doing it often. An important part in any war, with any enemy, is to know what they look like, to identify their attributes, etc. So a big part of understanding how to defeat the natural man is understanding what he looks like. The attributes on "the list" are a pretty accurate description of what to avoid or fight off.
In all, a really empowering and helpful week.
Today marks under the 60 day mark until home. Pretty crazy that it comes that fast.
One more picture- this was last week tracting in 10 degree weather. Not too successful, but makes for a good picture :)
Have a blessed week, world :)
Elder Busi
