Dear Family and Friends, Monday, July 22, 2013
This past week went pretty well. Things have been a little slow here lately. It has been really hard to find people to teach. Our area is pretty large and we only have 15,000 people that live in the whole area, so it makes finding tough. We just keep at it and we talk with everyone.
This past week went pretty well. Things have been a little slow here lately. It has been really hard to find people to teach. Our area is pretty large and we only have 15,000 people that live in the whole area, so it makes finding tough. We just keep at it and we talk with everyone.
Monday we cleaned the apartment and then went on a hike to a waterfall near our apartment. It was pretty fun. After that we taught Jay for the last time. He is moving to Yellowstone because he and his wife are having so many problems. It is kind of sad to see him go. After we taught him we saw Herb. He was his usual old self. He is such a funny old guy.
Tuesday we went to Bakersfield to do some service. There is a lady up there, Rosalie that runs a food bank. We helped there for about 4 hours handing food to people. That was a really good finding opportunity because we got to meet so many people. After that we contacted a few potential investigators and then went to a members house for dinner. The members we went to are the Lunds. They live in Stowe so we got to go over Smugglers Notch for the first time. That was pretty fun. Its one of the only places in Vermont that reminds me of Colorado. Dinner was awesome there. The Lunds are from Alpine Utah (the same town Elder Walker is from) and they are pretty cool. They live in a really nice house up there in Stowe.
Wednesday we contacted a few potential investigators, no luck. We then did service at the Johnson Municipal Building. They also set us up for service later on this week at Lamoille County Field Days, so that will be good. After that we went and saw Ken. He is listening to the Book of Mormon on CD. He got to the part about Lehi having the vision of The Tree of Life. He had a lot of questions about that. We told him to listen on and we are going to explain it to him tonight. After that we really didnt do anything until we met with the Bishop. All we did was knock on doors and talk to people in the streets. We met with the bishop to talk about how the work is going here.
Thursday we had exchanges. I stayed here with Elder Chronister and Elder Walker went to Essex with Elder Wells. The exchange was pretty good. We taught Alice first. She is a members mother and strictly catholic but she wants to learn about her daughters religion. The lesson went really well and she said that she would read the Book of Mormon. After that we went to a less actives house. We taught him about member missionary work. He has come the last 4 weeks in a row. Before that he hadnt been to church in over a year. We then contacted former investigators with no luck.
Friday we went to Essex to have an interview with our new mission president. President Stoker. That went really well. We had to hang around the meeting pretty late though, because we gave the sisters a ride there and the sisters had a few meetings after we were done. Some members from our congregation were there setting up for a wedding reception so we talked to them for a while until the sisters were ready. After we dropped the sisters off we went to have dinner with some former investigators. We had some really good steak. They are pretty awesome. Their names are Thomas and Jessica. He is an equipment mechanic and she works with disabled kids. It was a lot of fun. We taught a fun lesson for their 6 year old daughter. After that we went back to Johnson. It started pouring rain outside, so we got out our rain jackets and umbrellas. We contacted a less active but she wasnt home. As we were walking back she pulled up next to us and told us to get inside because it was dangerous outside. We told her we couldnt ride with a woman alone in a car. She said "okay." She handed us a bucket of KFC and then drove off. (Shes a little bit crazy.) So we walked down the street holding a bucket of KFC. Everyone was looking at us like "Where did you get that KFC?" because the nearest KFC is about 50 miles away. It was pretty funny.
Saturday we did our planning for the week, and then went up to Craftsbury to teach the Masse's. That went pretty well. She is really active in her own church so she isnt too interested in changing over but she is interested about our beliefs. After that we stopped by Adam and Faith and told their son Isaiah that he was invited to the scout activity this week, which is a baseball game in Burlington. They thought that was nice. After talking to them we visted Alberta. She is Jeremy's grandfather. Her husband Melvin just went to the hospital again. He has bad lungs from smoking in the past and has bad kidneys as well. She was pretty sad because the doctor told them that Melvin doesnt have much longer to live. After visiting with her we went to see Brother Cusson a less active member. He knows everything is true, but he had a bad experience with some ward members in the past and isnt ready to go back to church yet. It was fun talking to him. Elder Walker talked to him a lot about baseball and we invited him to come back. After that we had dinner at Jeremy's house. Jeremy is pretty fun. He runs an autoshop out behind his house. He just barely fixed up an old International Harvester gasoline tractor. He burned his hand really bad 2 weeks ago when he went to weld on the gas tank. Instead of filling it with water he decided to use a torch sparker to ignite the fumes in the tank to get rid of them. When he did that the flames caught his hand and burned it real bad, so from now on he is going to be smart and not weld on gas tanks without water in them. :) After dinner we visited a less active named Sister Adams. That went alright. We dont know why she wont come to church.
Sunday we had church. Isaiah, Adam and Faith's son came. He really enjoyed it. Jim gave him a ride, but had to run in the middle of the meeting because they got news that Melvin was doing even worse in the hospital. So after church we had to get Brother Mitchell to give Isaiah a ride back home. We contacted former investigators the rest of the day with no success, but then we did teach Adam and Faith at 6:00 and we had a really good lesson there. They are our favorite investigators by far. They are really down to earth and honest. We taught them about the Word of Wisdom, which talks about taking care of our bodies and eating healthy. One part of the Word of Wisdom is to not smoke because smoking is unhealthy. Both Adam and Faith have a problem with smoking but both want to overcome it. So we are going to teach them the stop smoking program.
Elder CW Jensen