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| Trees in Texas |
We ran into a house that had a bunch of skulls...pretty
creepy, but pretty awesome at the same time. I wouldn't have even seen it, but
luckily Elder Martin pointed it out so I could see it. I hope you enjoy this
little slice of Texas for the week.
Jacob has officially quit smoking and drinking, but now he
won't come to church and doesn't really read his scriptures. So, he may have to
be dropped. His progression is... well, it's kind of non-existent. Juan and
Elva we couldn't meet with this week. Nicolas came to classes for the first
time at church this week. He always comes to sacrament meeting, but he's never
been to classes before. Well, now he has, and it seemed like he liked them too.
It's hard to work with him right now because his wife Martha said we can't
challenge him to be baptized anymore because it's just pushing him away. So
when we had our last lesson and I felt the Spirit really strongly I asked him
to come to the classes at church instead. And he did. And he is now reading the
Book of Mormon with his family every day too. He knows it's all true. It's just
all up to him now to make the decision to be baptized.
Our appointment with Alexandria (who has the nickname of
Mamas. Don't ask me why) went superbly this week. We had 2 really. The first
one we set some expectations of what we do as missionaries and then started
teaching the restoration, but her crazy little brother was there driving the
spirit away, so we had to come back a second time. This time it was sweet. She
had read the whole restoration pamphlet before we got there. Then after I
shared the first vision we sat there for a few seconds to just let the Spirit
soak in. When we asked her what she felt she said, " Wow. That's amazing.
I just feel so good." and you could see her beaming from ear to ear. It
was sweet. Then she accepted our challenge to be baptized on the 31st of
August! It's amazing to see how much of a different person she is than from a
couple months ago. She was there when we were teaching Eliseo (that's her
uncle) when I had just got here. We asked her then if she wanted to join in but
she said no that's boring. Then when she came to church a couple times with
Eliseo she sat in the back and just made jokes about it the whole time with her
aunt. Now, she is super excited about it and wants to be baptized. It's so
interesting to see how people are ready when they are ready. The Lord knows
exactly when they'll be willing to listen, and even a couple weeks time will
make a huge difference.
Now I would like to share a story of how my wanting to talk
to everyone led us to a crazy old man's house. We were looking up inactive
people this week and went to the house we thought they lived in. No one was
home. I figured we can go next door and ask if they know where the person is (awesome
icebreaker by the way for a gospel conversation with them too). A 73 year old
man answers the door and we start talking to him. He is talking straight
spanglish at us, switching up every other word. Here's an example of one of his
sentences "the otras peoples dicen bad cosas. you sabe?" Seriously.
No joke. Then we just talk to him in all Spanish and he gets all excited and
lets us in his house. He pours us some juice and we start talking. I think he
was trying to convert us or something. Anyway, he mentions how he's seen us
walking around with our little book before. I say, "you mean this
one?" pulling a Book of Mormon out of my backpack. He says yes, and that
it's not true. What? How do you know that? Have you read it? He said no. But he
said since it was written by a man it can't be from God. Well, we asked him if
men wrote the Bible and he said well no that's different. He said there can't
be any prophets today. We asked him don't you believe God is the same
yesterday, today and forever? Well of course, he says. Then why wouldn't God
call a prophet today? He said the Bible says there would be no more prophets. I
say, really? Where? His eyes get all wide. He says he doesn't know, but it's in
there somewhere.
Then he asks to see a Bible and the Book of Mormon. I give
them to him (Keep in mind this whole conversation is in Spanish. Yes, I am
getting somewhat decent thanks to the much help I receive from the Lord daily).
So he has them both in his hand and asks, what's the name of this one? I say
the Bible. He says, good. Now what's the name of this one? I say The Book of
Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. He says no no no, what's the name of
this one? And repeats it several times and keeps trying to cut me off before I
say the "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" part (President Augustin
told us to always refer to the Book of Mormon by it's full name, and I'm glad I
did). I told him, look at the title. I am right. That's the name of the book. I
think he was trying to prove that it was Mormon's book, not the book of God,
but he didn't get me with that one. HAHA! Then he told us both how when he are
thirty we would remember talking to him and know that he is right and that our
church is wrong. I was thinking in my head, man you'll remember this day at the
judgement bar of God, but of course I
didn't day that. After being there for about an hour we left. I very slyly left
a Book of Mormon on his table so he didn't notice (Elder King had left a Book
of Mormon at someone's house before too. It was at this old baptist lady's
house who told us to never come back. She was too old to even see that he had
left a Book of Mormon on her couch! It was pretty funny). Anyway, as soon as we
got out of the door, Elder King looked at me and said book it to the car! He
had noticed I left the Book of Mormon on his table, and we both wanted to get
out of there before he noticed and gave it back to us. Haha, fun times.
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| Chef Moffitt |
Still me and Elder Martin doing exchanges here. I cooked
dinner for us both, which was pretty cool. Then he did all the dishes. What a
nice guy. We did a pretty good job at talking Spanish with each other for most
of the day, which was good too. Elder King and I aren't very good at doing
that. I think whatever you start out doing that's what you feel more used to,
and since we initially spoke English it is hard to break that trend. Elder
Martin was really good at talking to everyone. Literally everyone we saw when
we were out biking we just pulled over and talked to. That's another thing
Elder King and I need to improve on it. But it works just going and talking to
random people! We ended having a full on lesson with one lady and she told us
if she wasn't outside, if we had just knocked on the door, then she wouldn't
have talked to us. We ended up finding 4
people we could go back and visit just from talking to everyone we saw that
day. It'll be hard because I hate just talking to strangers, but I'll try it
out.
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| Elder Moffitt and Elder Martin |
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| Making home-made tortillas...impressive! |
By the way, that food we had was so so delicious. I love me some good Mexican food!
Here are some pictures that I got because they looked super
awesome. Unfortunately, the pictures don't capture the majesty of what the sun
and moon really looked like. The sun was so beautiful, but since we didn't stop
to take the picture with a nice background of Texan trees where I wanted to,
it's not quite as awesome. And the moon is from 5:00 this morning. It was super
big (can't really tell from the picture I know) and super red. Isn't a blood
red moon a sign of the second coming? Hmmm, interesting.
I
went out to this town called Sweetwater. It has a population of like 11,000.
Yet, they're still known for a record too. I heard about this "Rattlesnake
roundup" thing they do every year like 3 times while I was over there.
Apparently it's the biggest in the whole country. Anyway, it was lots of fun.
One of the ward members took us out to dinner that night, and bought us some fried cheesecake for dessert. It was pretty legit!
Haircuts last night from Elder Hancock. Ah, Elder Hancock
is so funny. He says I remind him of what his brother looks like and how he
acts, so yeah we're basically like best friends already, after 3 weeks.
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