When I decided to go on a mission, I always said I wouldn't mind serving places that most people didn't want to go to, like Pocatello Idaho or a country where you have to wipe your butt with your hand, or somewhere with a hard language. But the ONE thing I didn't want to have to face on my mission was SPIDERS. As usual, Heavenly Father has a sense of humor.
In the last couple days, we've had spiders, a cicada, a giant cricket, and a cockroach find their way into our apartment. Luckily, one of our ward members works in pest control and agreed to come kill all the bugs. But seriously, I am dying over here. I keep thinking I can feel them crawling on me at night. The final straw was when we realized that one of the desks we have (which are donated from some warehouse) was full of spider eggs. Ugh.
Anyways, the week has been tough, but good. Last week we had 4 progressing investigators, and now we have 0. We have this one huge problem that we keep facing. People just don't know what the Holy Ghost feels like. So many of our investigators are willing to sincerely pray about the Book of Mormon but then they're waiting for some huge rush of adrenaline or a booming voice from the sky or a sign from the heavens or something. A lot of churches around here play really loud music and stuff, so people mistake adrenaline for the Spirit a lot. It's such a big roadblock because until they start to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon, our lessons don't really go anywhere.
On Tuesday we had an investigator walk out in the middle of a lesson and slam the door on us! We weren't even having an argument with him, but he's really dramatic and told us this whole story about how he prayed to know Joseph Smith was a prophet and Heavenly Father said "NO. STOP ASKING ME. DON'T TEST ME OR I'LL SEND SATAN AFTER YOU." and then he gave this huge speech about how we were fighting with the devil for his soul or something and then ran away and slammed the door. It was pretty weird and disheartening at the time, but now we think it's kind of funny. We're definitely going to wait a few weeks before going back there. We also have another investigator who told us that Beyonce was the devil, and another one who thinks Heavenly Father rides in a spaceship. Hahaha.
In happier news though, we've been meeting with the wife of one of our investigators. She used to hate the missionaries but now she has us over all the time and always wants to give us stuff. Her husband (who has a lot of faith in the church but doesn't want to get baptized without his wife) is completely shocked and keeps saying he has no idea how she had her heart softened so much.
Everything else is going pretty decently. We had a meeting in Tulsa on Friday with President Shumway. He totally kicked our butts. He made all the new missionaries try to recite the order of the lessons and no one could really do it yet. We got chastised really badly but it was motivating. He's so funny.
My favorite thing we get to do here is teach people how to be missionaries. Obviously I'm not an expert at it (yet) but it's cool. We teach a class on Sundays for the youth who are getting ready to go on missions. And we also have a recent convert who is 18 and is thinking about serving, so we have been teaching him how to use Preach My Gospel.
I also love that we get to serve in the same ward as our zone leaders. One of them, Elder Phelps, is getting ready to go home and is HILARIOUS. We seriously have a paper where we just write down the funny things that he says. The best one this week was "I see a wicker chair but all I hear is 'I HATE FAT PEOPLE.'" Hahahah. Maybe you have to know him to think he's funny. Yesterday one of the members who is an older woman was telling him that he was going to find a great wife and he said "By the time I get married you'll be DEAD."
Sister Breaux is such a good trainer. And we get along great. We have the same weird sense of humor so we've started talking to each other in whatever weird voices we make up and sometimes we almost forget to switch back when we're teaching lessons...
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