It has been a very interesting week, trying to get
used to the bus schedules. It takes nearly an hour to get anywhere and
we aren't allowed to proselyte on the bus (according to transit rules,
but there is no rule against friendly conversations about religion!), so
we have to plan very carefully. My shoulders are killing me from
hauling everything, including food and water around all day long. And
sometimes I feel like I am just going in circles. Luckily, the bus
system is relatively easy to figure out. We just have to make it to the
bus stop on time, or we could be waiting for any where from 30-60
minutes for some buses. Which makes for excellent finding time, but it's
not so good if we have an appointment. But we haven't gotten stranded
or missed an appointment yet, so everything is working out so far.
There have been a lot of ups and downs. We have had some really
solid potentials and formers that we set up appointments with, only for
them to fall through. We are still teaching M, but there
is only so much that we can teach a five year old that will also help
his dad progress. We are honestly not even sure what we are doing, since
M is very spiritually connected, but he doesn't seem to remember
anything that we teach him. It's a little weird. We also started
teaching K and L M, who are the mom and sister of a member
who lives just down the hall from us. We really don't know how much they
understand, because they are older and speak mostly Tagalog, but Sister
M really wants us to teach them, and they are very friendly. They
just seem pretty firm in their beliefs, and her other two sisters are
not so keen on the idea, so it is going to be interesting. We also got a
hold of a former named M. She struggles a lot and it's just a
really sad situation, so hopefully we will be able to help her. The best
part of the week was R and W. We finally had a real sit down
lesson with R, not just a quick visit at work. She committed to be
baptized when she knows it's true and when she feels like she can commit
herself, but it will probably take a while, because she works almost
every day. She does do the schedule, so hopefully she will try to
arrange some time so she can come to church. W is a potential that we
found while tracting one night. She said we could come back on Sunday,
so we did. I don't think she was expecting us to come back. The rest of
her family wasn't home, so we just talked to her. We taught her about
the nature of God and talked a little about what we believed. She mostly
seems interested in the fact that we aren't super serious all the time.
Apparently the church they used to go to in Vancouver was full of
people who were always stone faced and super serious, even outside of
church. Honestly, that sounds a little depressing. She said she is going
to talk to her husband and find out when we can come back and teach her
whole family. It was really cool, because she didn't really seem
interested at first, but as we talked, she really warmed up to us.
At the same time as all of this, we had so many appointments fall
through, both with active investigators, former investigators and
potentials. These people are really solid, or so we thought, but they
just don't want to make the time for us. I guess we are one of the
adjustable things in their life, and they figure that we will always be
there. They just don't get it and we can't ever teach them, so we can't
help them understand! It is beyond frustrating, especially when they
don't let us know ahead of time. Now that we use the bus system, it
takes a lot of time to get anywhere and we can't just run from one place
to another. It takes a lot of careful planning and when they just
aren't home or they don't show up, it really stinks. Hopefully, this
next week will be better.
Love you,
Sister Peterson
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