Dear Family,
Well it is still blistering hot here and I now have a pretty impressive farmers tan (partially from how much sun I’ve gotten and partially because of how white the rest of me has gotten) and I am working on a watch tan. I have never gotten a watch tan in my life, even though I wear it all day, every day. It must be because it always slides around. I can actually see an outline of my watch now though. If I get a good one, I’ll have to take a picture.
We’ve also had several thunderstorms this week. And yes, it was still burning hot. I did get some sweet pictures and videos of the thunderstorms though. You could literally see lightning bolts shooting out of/around the sky every 5 seconds at one point. So I went outside and focused my camera then took the picture as soon as I saw a flash. I got some amazing pictures of lightning shooting across the sky. Then I took 2 videos as well. I’ll probably send home my memory card in a few weeks. I don’t have that many pictures on it right now, but I do have a good amount of videos.
Here is a pretty crazy story. We got a referral on our cell phone the other day. (When people call church HQ and order stuff, they send us those referrals directly to our phones via text message). Someone ordered a Book of Mormon from the church website and the comment was “I am looking into joining LDS. Getting and reading a Book of Mormon is the first step. Thank you and God bless!!” We were excited of course, but at the same time skeptical, because it sounds too good to be true. Well, we contacted the referral and it is true. This guy is 18 and hes about to leave for Kansas State University and he has a lot of friends that are Mormon and 2 grandparents that are Mormon as well. The only sad part is that hes moving in a few weeks. He did say that his mom and his sister would probably be interested as well, so we are trying to contact them as well, but they are going to move too if they can sell their house. It seems like everyone is moving away from our area right before they get baptized!! It is a little frustrating, but I am glad that people are joining the church.
2 Nigerian people came to church with their daughter yesterday. Their names are Michael, Yabo, and Elizabeth Akinola. They have been coming every so often (like once a monthish) for about 3 months, but they are almost impossible to contact and there is a little bit of a language barrier. We finally got in contact with them a few days ago and invited them to come to church and set up an appointment for this week. I am excited for that. Yabo (the mom) calls our church her church. Story: One day when we stopped by their house to try to contact them and Yabo happened to be outside. She asked who we were and we told her we were missionaries. Then she asked for which church. We told her the name of the church. Then she asked which church that is, and we told her the location of our chapel, then she gets a big smile on her face and she said “OH!! That’s my church!!!” So, they already consider themselves members of the church, but we just need to teach them so they can be official members of the church. Hopefully they are there for their appointment (a lot of African people don’t really have any concept of appointments).
One goal that my companion and I have made is that we want to have a member with us at every single set appointment that we have. I may have told you that before. But we have been doing that and it makes a huge difference. The members bring something to the lesson that we cant offer. We aren’t just normal people who live in the area. Its different for someone to listen to someone who lives in their own area, who is not a full time missionary. I really love working with the members. We have some really interesting people in our ward too.
I’ve told you about the ex navy seal/nuclear bomb maker. He is always a fun one to visit. I don’t know if I have ever told you about the inventor. I think I may have. He is a less active guy and he actually retired several years ago, but since then he’s started inventing tons of stuff. He is definitely passionate about inventing, and that is an understatement. He told us all about these pens he invented that use magnets, so it clips to itself, and how he did the same thing with glasses so he could clip his glasses to his shirt. Well, he comes to find out that magnets cause a condition called Rouleaux and Aggregation, which is where you blood cell stack and it causes all these problems. Doctors put magnets in pace makers, which gives them magnetic poisoning and they don’t even know they're doing it. So he is working with some big medical guys and he’s writing a huge report about that whole deal. It will be interesting to see if that turns out to be a big thing.
Someone else in our ward runs the website www.mycardata.com. Car manufacturers send him a new car every Thursday and he drives them around for a week, then puts up a report on that website I guess, then he gets a new car and repeats it. It is fun to see what new car he has every week. He’s driven almost every car out there. He once had a $300,000 Bentley.
Anyway, I’ve noticed in these past couple weeks that I’ve really learned to love missionary work. I’m not really concerned with the number of baptisms I get or any sort of numbers, I just love to help people and show them that they can live happier lives. That’s all I really care about. Whether I’m helping an active member, less active member, or a non-member, I just want to help them and bless their lives. It’s the one time in your life where you just forget about everything else and just dedicate everything to being an instrument in God’s hands. Throughout this last week or 2 I’ve seen so many situations where we have been led to the right place at the right time so that we could help someone out. Sometimes it’s a little thing and sometimes it’s a huge thing. This last week we stopped by and visited someone whose family is getting split apart and there is a whole lot of chaos and confusion going on. (He is the rapper I think I mentioned a few months ago). He’s been inactive since he was 19 and he knows hes made a lot of mistakes, but his family is the 1 thing he cares about more than anything. Now that that is falling apart, he knows he needs help. We just happened to show up at this doorstep the day after all this started happening and he broke down for the first time ever and he asked for a blessing. I am glad that we decided to go there at that specific time.
There is so much that is involved in missionary work too. You have to balance a lot of things and there really is a lot of skill involved. Its kind of like a sport to me. You need to practice a lot and develop your talents. As you do that then you perform well. Plus its also fun.
Ok I am out of time and I have got to go! President Saylin also started something in the mission where we e-mail him weekly instead of write him letters. He gave us 15 more minutes of e-mail time for that, so I am going to go do that right now. Have a good week, I love you all!!!
Love,
Chase
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment