Hey Mom!
This week:
Effective tracting,
guard dogs, sentiment and spirit, punching pumpkins, and CURSE YOU BETTY
CROCKER!!
It is good to hear from
everyone! Sounds like you guys are all holding together well. I just realized
that I've been out for four months now. Whaddya know? That's already 1/6th of
the mission! Nice to hear that you were able to witness Adam's physical feats
of wonder. He's a pretty great guy. I probably should've made it a point to
email more of my friends, but I'm afraid that I never got their email addresses
or anything, but oh well. Time will come with it! I'll just see if I can get
them from Mckay.I forgot to say last time, but because of the colder weather, I
have now resorted to P90X3 indoors, so sweats aren't needed now.
But yes, this week we did
a lot of tracting the past few days. I'm not going to lie, it's not as bad as I
thought it would be, but it certainly is a challenge. I just always thought the
concept of knocking on yon stranger’s door and asking them if they'd like to
hear about a message about Christ was a little sketchy. That is, until I
actually tried it. Statistics still speak truth, out of the many doors we
tried, not too many answered positive, albeit the folks were polite! But we
actually, believe it or not, found two new investigators this last week while
doing it! We felt inspired to try by this one less-active, and after we found
he wasn't home, tracted his neighborhood. About 3 doors later, we met the
Toscanos family, who eventually let us in and allowed us to teach them the Restoration.
It was pretty cool! Felt pretty awkward at first building up to that, but in
the end, they'd say they’d read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. Awesome!
We also ran into this one lady yesterday who has such a strong faith in Jesus
Christ, and told us that she wished more people would have faith themselves.
She said that through that faith, she had been healed of asthma, but she still
had a leg problem. You can probably guess what we decided to do, and she said
she would be more than happy for us to give her a priesthood blessings sometime
this week. Double Awesome!
Man, tracting is
effective to certain degree! I'd still rather work through members, but I guess
the Lord prepares people in the way we need to see them.
And I also had my first
run in with a guard dog this week. It wasn't too intimidating, but it was
unchained and growling, so I just did a to-the-rear and we decided to come back
a different day. There are worse dogs in Yakima though, last week we walked by
this one fenced home and there was a family of Rottweilers in the yard, and
papa dog was the biggest dog I've ever seen. Funny, when we talked to the
neighborhood watchman, Bro. Harold, he told us that he had to whack that one
dog with his cane once or twice, and how the animal department wanted to put
papa dog down on certain occasions. Don't worry, I have no aspirations for
trying a dog's patience.
On a brighter note, I've
really been trying to get over my feelings against sentiment. Whenever Elder
Beatty and I sit down to discuss what to teach, he likes to speak softly for
the spirit to be more present. I'm perfectly fine with that, but if there is
one thing Cadet Staff did to all of us, it's to take orders and carry them out,
not let emotions get in the way. I've been doing my best, but oh man...I love
spirit, but I hate sentiment! Where do I bridge the two?! I do my best to teach
with spirit, but I do go a little quickly sometimes, and....argh. I think you
can see my dilemma here. I can teach by the spirit, but outside of lessons,
sentiment isn't my priority. Could work on that.
But, to cool all that
mental conflict off, we destroyed our jack-o-lantern. So we set it on the ridge
of the open trash can and each took turns throwing punches into it in the hopes
it would snap. It didn't. And eventually I detected just how stupid this
probably looked to anyone watching from their homes, so I settled for a
Leonidas-like kick to finish it. The only problem is that my heel missed the
majority of the kick, and I pretty much just tapped the pumpkin with my soul
and kicked the can with my heel. After the pumpkin fell in, we just decided to
leave it there. In other fun stories, remember Bob and Priscilla? Well, the
last time we saw them, Priscilla gave us each $20. We immediately told her we
would not take it, but I knew well enough that she wasn't going to take it
back. So to avoid priest-craft, we are going to return the money to her next
time we see her. Could you please pray that she isn't offended that we give her
the money back? Because she is such a sweet old lady. I don't want to make it
seem like we are being rude or anything.
I also took the time to
buy some Betty Crocker Bisquick this past week. We have a waffle iron in our
home. I'm not too happy about that decision now, because those shortcakes and
waffles were probably the best/worst thing I've eaten on the mission so far.
They were awesome! But they were so unhealthy! And this past week, we probably
were exposed to more advertisement for all new movies than ever before. It's
crazy to see how Star Wars is capitalizing on ep. 7. Not to mention the next
Hunger Games, the new Bond movie, etc. But don't think I'm losing my focus! I
am staying strong! There will be plenty of time for that later on in the
future. It's all good.
In terms of needs, we're
doing fine. Our iron is being repaired so hopefully we get it back soon enough.
But can you send me that picture of staff from the awards banquet in that care
package? The one with the whole staff on it? I thought it would be good to have
something animate to describe my past life with me. Could you also please send
a more-conservative? Elder Beatty has confirmed the one I have doesn't cut it.
Other than that, thanks for your emails! It really is such a blessing to be
serving the Lord, and I know that this is His work that we are called to do!
And man, is it awesome!
Love you all,
Michael
P.S. We also helped a
guy build his back deck a few days back. Brought back good memories of certain
walls and fences that were built.
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