Monday, October 13, 2014

Deodorant Can't Give you Cancer!!! (June 5, 2014)

Sorry for emailing so late. It´s been a crazy week. I had to go to Málaga Sunday morning to renew my residency card early Monday. I had to leave church early on Sunday and take an 9 hour bus ride to Málaga without Elder Sharp. I was with a couple other missionaries. The bad part was that it was Sunday so we couldn´t buy any snacks along the way. We were starving. We stayed at the mission home Sunday night and then Monday morning we went to do our residency. After, we were able to have the day off, but Elder Sharp was then traveling to Malaga so I didn´t want to email without him. So we walked around Malaga for a while. I went and saw Inma who was working that day in Malaga. She seemed happy to see me and I gave her a letter that I had written and also some letters for the family. 


After that we had a meeting in the mission home for the night. We heard some good talks about how to be better missionaries and stuff like that. Then the next afternoon we headed back to Elche in a car. We did intercambios with some missionaries in Malaga, so Elder Sharp stayed in Malaga and I went with an Elder Olsen back to Elche. I was a little nervous because I still don´t know the area very well and I had to figure it out. But we stayed busy that night and set three baptismal dates with new investigators. One is with a really cool mexican kid named Cxxxx. His mom had spoken with missionaries before, and her ex-husband back in Mexico was Mormon and so she has close relations to the church. The date is for the 28th of June. Then after, we went by two other investigators and had our first real lesson with them. They are an ecuadorian mother and her 16 year old daughter. We invited them to be baptized and the daughter said yes right away. The mom is a little less convinced but more or less agreed to a baptismal date for the 28th as well. The daughter for sure is getting baptized. It might take a little more time with the mom. 

Then the next day Elder Sharp came back and we went to visit a reference that a member gave us. It was a family of 4. Two grandparents, a woman and her 12 year old child. We taught them about the restoration and then committed them to be baptized on the 28th if they recieved an answer that the church was true. Just the mother and her child. The grandparents are a little tougher. We´ll get them though. Then after, we went and visited another investigator. She had had a few lessons before but this was the first time I had met her. We taught her the restoration as well, and then invited her to be baptized on the 5th of July and she accepted. So in 24 hours our area changed a ton. We still have other investigators we want to invite to be baptized, so we´re hoping to make June a great month. 
 
O yeah, our Romanian family that we found and were making good progress with: We went and were planning on giving them a baptismal date, but they informed us that they were getting kicked out of their house in 3 days and were going to have to live on the street because they would be unable to find a new apartment in time. We calmed them down and told them they would find one. We decided not to talk about baptism because they had other problems at the time. A couple days later they found a new apartment, but it is right on the other side of the border with the other ward here in Elche. So they don´t even belong to our ward anymore. We arenñt sure what we are going to do with them. We of course will have the other missionaries teach them. But they won´t really understand why it has to be that way. O well. We´ll figure it out.

But yeah. That was the week.

Elder Sharp is 20. So I guess that´s average? We came here at the same time, yes. The other companionships in the zone are doing well. May was a rough month for the whole zone but June will definitely be better. we have a goal of three baptisms as a companionship, and 6 as a zone. 

I guess we´ll be talking in a few days now.

One thing we´ve started doing in lessons is teaching very simply about the restoration on the very first visit. i don´t know why this started writing in italics. But we just say that in the history of the world, when there was a prophet, there was also the true church of God. When there wasn’t a prophet, there wasn’t the true church of God. We beat this into their heads a million times. Then we talk about Jesus and how he gave his apostles authority and established the true church again. But then he died and the authority was lost. because there was no longer a prophet, there was no longer the true church of God. Many people looked for the true church but because there was no prophet, there couldn’t be one. Joseph smith asked, and was called to be a prophet. Because there was a prophet, there was also the true church of God. Then we tell them to pray to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet. Then we invite them to be baptized. And that’s it. We don´t talk about the Book of Mormon or anything. And it´s working like crazy. So good. Tell all your friends.

Love ya, bye


Calvin

No comments:

Post a Comment