This week has been great! General Conference was so
amazing! Every speaker was so engaging and I'm so grateful that our
investigator got so much out of it!
Update on
Jamarus! We met with him on Tuesday and introduced the Book of Mormon.
We brought Brother Doxie with us and it was a great lesson! Before we
started the lesson Jamarus asked what the difference is between our
church and other christian churches. We said, "Priesthood". We started
to explain a little more and he said, "That's all you need to say. You
don't need to explain it anymore. I felt it on Sunday."
As we were reading from the Introduction of the Book of Mormon,
Elder Campbell told Jamarus that the Book of Mormon is written for our
day and for our specific challenges. As he was saying that, Jamarus
said, "I already know. Like, you don't even know. I already know that
this is going to help me".
So we had another lesson on Friday and we asked him how his reading
was. He said that he read the first book and he apologized that he
didn't read more. He said that he had to read it twice to be able to
understand it. We assumed that he just read the first chapter. But the
next thing he said made us realize that we were mistaken! He started to
say, "Nephi and all of them were raised in a good house, a religious
house. But it seems like Sam isn't really too into it. He is there, he
believes. but he doesn't really do the things that Nephi does. But he
still believes".
From that we realized that he didn't just read the first chapter.
We asked him if he read about them building a ship. He said, "Yeah, and
his brothers said 'you cant build a ship'." Wow! He read the first book
of Nephi from Tuesday to Friday!!! And he read it twice!!!
Jamarus was also able to come to our Ward mission
leaders house to watch General Conference and he really liked it! He
said that its so great that he is hearing this now because this is what
he needs. He also said that he used to by angry all the time and his
family is noticing what the Gospel is doing for him because he isn't mad
all the time.
There were a few things that stuck out to him and that he said
really were true. When the speakers would talk about fame, the world and
how it comes up short, how the family should be... and so on. It was
cool because right before the second session on Saturday he told us that
he has a hard time trusting girls because of his mom and so on... but
right in the next session one of the speakers mentioned trust and that
we need to trust people more. There were so many answers and so many
bells going off in Jamarus' head!
I also had some questions answered this week. I
always like to write down questions that I have in the weeks before
General Conference, and for the most part they are usually answered!
One
of the questions I had was "how can I distinguish peace in the world
versus peace in the Gospel?" My answer came in many different talks but
the one that stood out to me was in priesthood session with Elder
Nelson. My answer was basically that if there is truth in the world then
it is the peace of the Gospel. The two are not separate.
Also something I forgot to include in my previous
letter is an experience with our High Counselor over Missionary work in
the Stake. His name is President Nielsen and he was a mission president
in Poland. He is so good at talking to people about the gospel!
So he took us out to dinner and after the waitress took his and his
wife's order and right before she was going to take ours President
Nielsen said, "Do you know who these guys are?" then we got into a
conversation about the church and where she grew up and it ended with us
getting her contact info and she agreed to meet with us! She doesn't
live in our area but it was a really great experience! Remember to talk
to every one about the Gospel!!!
We had such an experience when we were eating dinner
at Wendy's this past week. The guy who took our order was really nice,
but the store was busy so we didn't talk to him too much. While we were
eating both Elder Campbell and I felt like we needed to talk to him. We
waited for him to come around to where we were sitting and we started
talking about his two jobs that he works and other aspects of his life.
We didn't get to talk about the Gospel yet because he had to go take
someones order. As we were getting ready to leave I saw Elder Campbell
waiting to go talk to him and it was super awkward. so I said I am going
to use the restroom to give him more time to talk to him. As I came out
they were shaking hands and the guy had a Restoration Pamphlet in his
hands!
Elder Campbell said that he came up to him and said, "Do you have
any extra pamphlets? I need to get back into church". It was awesome!!!
So
we are preparing to do a training tomorrow. Its Zone Training Meeting,
which happens every month. The Training is on "Finding people to teach".
We are focusing on "talking with everyone" and we are trying to get
missionaries to stop being so robotic and start just being themselves. A
part of our training is titled "Missionaries are people too" haha. So I
will update you next week on how our training went :)
On Monday we set a goal to find 2 new investigators
from the start of General Conference on Saturday to the end of General
Conference on Sunday. We set this goal because it is super difficult for
missionaries to get out and do a lot of work in between conference
sessions because of members, lunch, and just the fact that its not that
much time. So we went out in between the sessions and talked to as many
people as we could! The first person we talked to, Jasmine, is from
Armenia and we have a return appointment to teach her this Thursday. It
was a great experience because with each of the people we talked to we
had a good conversation with. We were able to get to know them and then
talk to them about the Gospel. Our other solid person we talked to is a
guy from Ethiopia and he said he would be at church this Sunday.
The only bad experience we had while talking to people was when we
saw this gangster guy walking on the other side of a residential street
and we started to walk toward him. We said something to him and he just
said, "Man! you are jay walking". After he yelled that at us I kinda
lost my patience with him already so I just started to walk away; I knew
that anything else I said would just have been out of anger haha. So as
we walked away Elder Campbell said, "Have a nice day." To which he
responded, "You Jay Walking again! You're breaking the law. Mormons are
crazy!" Haha it was so funny!
We were contacting a referral and they were not
home. as we were leaving we saw a woman doing some yard work. We talked
with her for a while and a concern came up about the Book of Mormon. She
said she couldn't believe something like that. We gave her the
background and explained the Book of Mormon and she loved it! People are
just misinformed and we need to tell them the truth!!! Her name is Lisa
and we will be calling her next week to set up an appointment.
We taught Armour on Tuesday and he said he doesn't
want to set a date for baptism yet but he does want to work towards it.
So we will see how that goes! We don't think he watched conference which
is a bummer but he did say he will come to church this week!
Well I think that's it for this week!
I love you all!
Love,
Elder John
"Life's
comparatively few ironies are much more than offset by heavens many
mercies! We cannot count all our blessings every day, but we can carry
over the reassuring bottom line from the last counting." -Neal A.
Maxwell
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