This week has been a little crazy,
both good and bad. We had so many lessons either set up or had a possibility of
setting up, but almost all of them fell through. The two investigator lessons
that did go through were complete opposites.
We taught I. again on Wednesday. We
planned to get to the church a little early so that we could set everything up
and make sure that everything was in place for the church tour. That plan went
a little awry. Right before, we were tracting on a random street, and there was
a guy walking up and down the street, with a little boy that turns out to be
his nephew. Usually, I have a hard time approaching someone just walking on the
street, but we had seen him two or three times, so I decided to cross the road
to talk to him. Turns out, he is one of our potentials. He lost contact with
the elders who used to cover this area, and his information isn't in our area
book at all. So finding him was a miracle. He seems to be really interested, we
just have to find a time to teach him. He really doesn't know when we can,
because he is looking for work and his schedule is never the same., Anyway, it
made us late to set up for I.'s lesson. He didn't seem very interested and a
little preoccupied, but he did want to see the building, so we took him on the
church tour. It was a little distracted, because he kept bringing things up
like The Da Vinci Code. At the end, while we were in the chapel, everything
started to fall apart. I love the member that we were with dearly, but I think
she might have had a bad day or been under a lot of stress. She really started
pushing him on church attendance. Even after we sat down to finish the lesson,
she wouldn't let it go and basically told him that he was ignoring the Spirit.
At the same time, I. had some very specific questions he wanted to ask, but
couldn't get out, because the member kept interrupting him and us. He got very
frustrated. Eventually we were able to begin to address his questions,
specifically about the Godhead. We gave him some chapters to study and told him
that we would teach him more about the Godhead next time. Looking back, we can
see that this has been a concern for a while now. Apparently, both the lessons
that were taught before I came involved the Godhead and the first lesson I
taught did as well. My companion and I honestly felt like we nearly lost him
with that lesson, and we were very worried about the next one. We shouldn't
have been. Thursday, he called us up and told us he didn't want to meet with us
anymore. He said that he appreciated us, but that we weren't professional
enough and didn't show enough concern towards him. While we take these concerns
at face value, Sister C and I believe that while we could have done better, I.
was looking for a reason to get out, and this provided an easy one. He just
wants a philosophical discussion, and we were trying to help him change for the
better. So we probably would have had to place him in a reflective pool pretty
soon. He did say that he is still going to read the Book of Mormon, so there is
a little bit of hope for him.
Our other lesson was with Y. It also
involved a church tour, but it couldn't have turned out any different from I.'s.
Last week, we asked her to start reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning,
specifically 1 Nephi 1-2. She loved it. She was drawing all the parallels
between her life and Lehi and Nephi's experience. She even said her husband was
a little like Laman and Lemuel sometimes. We hadn't even taught her about
applying the scripture stories to her life. She is honestly amazing. She
absolutely loved the church tour. We talked to her a lot about how this is all
because God loves her. She loved the Young Women's and Young Men's programs and
the Relief Society theme. She really really really wants this, she is still
just hesitant in talking to her husband about coming to church! She felt the
Spirit so strongly, especially in the chapel. She committed to talk to her
husband this week sometime, so she should be coming to church really soon!
President T is coming to our next lesson with her, and hopefully, he can help
give her the extra assurance that she needs, because his family had a similar
situation at one point. He has also agreed to give her a blessing if she wants
one. She is so close! She just has to come to church!
We also had some less active/recent
convert lessons. We never seem to have a problem getting those lessons done. We
hit or exceed our goal every week. But we never seem to get our goal for
investigators, even though that is our main focus. We usually have the
appointments, but they almost always fall through! It's really frustrating,
especially now that we aren't teaching Ifti anymore, we really only teaching Y.
But we have some wonderful finding ideas that we are going to be putting into
play within the next month or so.
The first one is a 40 day fast. The
idea is that every day, a member or family will fast for missionary work and
for the opportunity to do their own missionary work. Then either the elders or
we will visit with the person or family and share a spiritual thought and see
if they have any referrals for us or people that they have had experiences with
that we could teach. Sister C has done this in other areas and it has been
really successful. It's also a good way to get members involved, especially
with the changes we have made to our dinner calendar.
The other one is kind of my brain
child. In the front of the planner, there is a list of finding ideas, and one
of them is a fireside. So at the end of June, we are going to have a fireside
on Faith in Jesus Christ. President and Sister T are going to come speak and we
are going to get as many people who live in the Surrey 1st ward boundaries in
the chapel as we possibly can. The ward has also decided to do a potluck kind
of thing afterwards, so that we can keep people there and talk to them. I
really think that this will be good. This has also been incredibly successful
in other areas, and we are talking to other missionaries who have done similar
things and figuring out how we want to get people there and let them know about
it. It is going to be really good.
Some people really have an
interesting perspective on us. Last night, we knocked on the door of a man who
really doesn't like Mormons. He claims to know all about us, but here's the
funny thing. We started off by identifying ourselves as missionaries from the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We talked a little about prophets
and he asked who our current prophet was, so we told him it was Thomas S
Monson. It wasn't until we mentioned Joseph Smith that he realized who we were.
For someone who know all about the church, he is missing some crucial facts,
like our name! He is also of the opinion that Utah lives in the medieval times
still and that girls are all but imprisoned. When I told him I was from Utah,
he was very shocked, and asked me how I managed to escape. At the same time, it
was very sad. He was adamant that God exists, but that you can't know anything
through the Spirit and that we are completely deluded. It's sad, but we tried. He
just doesn't want to listen.
Hopefully, this week will have a lot
more lessons! We really need the investigators.
I love you all,
Sister Peterson
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