About my new area, King George.
King George covers a huge area (there is my last area, Staunton VA which was the largest area in the mission, King George is the second largest and iIthought Staunton was country.... not even close, King George is near DC so a lot of people commute to DC or work at Dahlgren military base, also most people that we are finding do construction, are retired, or live in a trailer park. We have Colonial Beach in our area and the breeze really helps take the humidity slightly off our backs and in the King George area there are some crazy awesome people as well.
Just to give a slight brief explanation of how
I do my weekly letters
and emails, I review my week and write down
points I want to elaborate
on or just events the went on. Most all the
people or things I talk
about in these are slightly edited due to my feelings
of what went on,
what really happened, and personal privacy.
Plus a bit of time
restraint. I only got an hour or slightly more
to write emails and
read them...
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| From Transfer Day |
Monday was mainly our day of preparation and
having a member feed us.
We then afterwards went to a really really old
guy's house (Murdock) and he is very fun to talk with.
He has seen the world and had done everything
and it was a request by
a member to have us stop by so we were happy to
help out! We then had
family home evening with a younger couple and
they made tie dye shirts
for us.
Tuesday this week we were focused on doing
something called "power
visits" which is where we stopped by
members of the church's home and
had 5 minute power lesson to be able to get to
know the members a lot more, then after each house we visited, we went to go
find people to teach
by knocking the doors nearby. There was one
13yr old kid who was super
cool doing tricks on his scooter who stopped us
and talked with us about what we were teaching and wanted to know more so we
basically
said "we can come back another day because
we have to go, but here's
the link to the website for our church and in
the meantime you gotta
ask your mom if we can come by and teach."
just because we have to get permission to teach minors. After we left and went finding
more people to teach there was a lady that got super mad at us for
"soliciting" so I asked her a question or two about our message and
my companion did the same and she got super mad at us and super red in the face
and started saying very non-polite things to us so we just said "have a
blessed day mam" and left. The spirit of peace was headed out of the
conversation. We then went dinner and stopped by one or two more people before
the night ended.
Wednesday we had a meeting with the district
(or group) of
missionaries that work around our areas. I
learned more about being in
tune with the spirit and how to be able to be
more bold, not blunt.
After the meeting the other elders and us had a
lunch break and I
taught one of the other elders how to wrestle
like a Mongolian fellow
showed me one time, that was fun. He won, and
that was a good
experience for the both of us. We headed back
tour area and we were
visiting potential investigators along the way
back home, we changed
out of our suits then went to go and teach the
world!
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| My district |
Elder Paskett,Elder Langford,Elder Day ,and my companion Elder Johnson (he has the very light Blue Tie)
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We met a man named Joshua whose wife is looking
for a church for their pluthera of kids so we invited them to church and they
agreed they would come! We talked with Dwayne later that night about the book
of Mormon and he got it on his mobile device to read and just right there
started reading it, it was awesome to see someone so interested in the Book of
Mormon.
Thursday during the morning in personal study I
happened to find a
topic to study within the scriptures. Cleansing
the Inner Vessel for
Christ. I learned many great things about being
able to have an outward change means what happens on the inside must change or
there is no effect of what can be done with what is trying to be changed It was
also weekly planning and that was interesting because we were planning for
next week for people that we were teaching later that day. We taught 3 new
investigators we found yesterday that told us we could come back today. One
had some crazy deeply rooted questions about God and perceptions of God, the
other 2 were just curious about what we believed
Friday we went and helped out at the Opp shop
and I got comics then
afterwards we then visited a ton of people and
pretty much no one was
home and talked to L. and showed him “And He Lives” Mormon message
had dinner with the Weeds and they cooked the
pasta that I had and we
talked with brother Weight and he talked all
about his past
and afterwards we wanted to visit people but no
one was really home. We are both tried
and tested and it was hard.
Saturday
We went to the church building to do area book
work then Bro Alvarez
asked us to help clean the building so we
cleaned a few windows and
then went to Dwayne and he wasn't able to talk
so we had a struggle
figuring out what to do so then went and
stopped by Josh and invited
him to church. After we went to pick up the
copies of the Book of
Mormon and had food from a member for lunch. I
got my hot wheels car
of the Delorian car. Then I had 6 hotdogs then
we stopped by a ton of
peoples’ houses and people were not available
to talk. We felt
impressed to walk to a former investigator's
house but stopped by the
other house in front and we talked with an
awesome older African
couple who loved Jesus and wanted to read the
Book of Mormon.
After we went to dinner with some young single
adult members I found out were in our stake (I had known them from my first
area on the mission in
Glen Allen) and they fed us pizza (David and
Haylee). It was some good
pizza. After that they said that they would get
in contact with us
again to set up another time to bring someone
they knew to hear the
Gospel of Jesus Christ and what we taught.
We then stopped by an investigators house and
she was outside with some friends looking after the kids playing around on the
block. All the kids came up to us and asked Elder Johnson if he had any Jesus
cards so we started passing out cards and they all thanked us for them.
After we felt we needed to stop by Dwayne and a
miracle happened. He was home and said that he wanted to come to church! So we
are excited to see him and Josh and Josh's family. Today was my first companion
in the field’s birthday (Elder Hopkins) so when we were with the members of the
young single adult ward who knew Elder Hopkins, I let them know about the
birthday and they said that they would leave some goodies to their place and
write that I say hello as well. We had a kind of rough rest of the night
because the people that were supposed to see were all were getting in their car
to go somewhere... Ahh well, got the new phone today and that is an adjustment
to get used to.
Sunday we participated in the young men's group
during church for
their meeting that they had discussing the way
that they were going to
set up their organization of planning and
carrying forth plans for the
rest of the existence of the King George Ward. It was interesting to
see. There is 1 sixteen yr old, one 14yr old
and 7 twelve year old
kids. That was probably one of the most
interesting and actually very
effective planning sessions I have ever been a
part of since my days
of youth group. We also visited a lot of people
and had the 16 yr old
teach his family a gospel lesson when we backed
him up. For dinner we
went to a members house and they had a ton of
Lego collections and Nerf guns (like 8 times as much as me) so they asked if we
could have
a nerf gun war with them and we debated.... But
then dinner was ready!
It was an awesome dinner too. Calzone
Quesadeas. Afterward the father of the family was able to come out with us to
visit some people we had in mind and then he asked us the question "what
life events made you decide to go on a mission and why are you here now?"
Thankfully my companion went first and he told of his conversion
story(which was an honor to hear), then I told of how for me, the forgiving power
of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and being able to be free from regret and
harbored things was a main reason, but the most important to me was The Love
that God and Jesus Christ have for us.
And that was the final thing that ended our night... it was a very
spiritual week and very draining and it felt quick, yet slow. Just like with
all things we focus on so much that it becomes what we want to strive for in
our understanding and being.
Elder Day
