Hey Mom! July
11, 2016
This week:
Goodbye Ephrata, Elder Summit,
reviving member spirit, and seeing results!
Well, I'll be darned, family
reunion is taking place eh? Well, that's wacky to think about. Seems like yesterday
was the last one, and I wasn't even at it. Sheesh. I wonder if that's how
Daniel, Paul, Mason, and Greg felt too. Will they be coming? That would be
absolutely grand if Paul and Brooke could come up for that. So many memories
would be made, and most of them would probably be Paul showing us up with
regards to beach-bods.
The 4th mainly consisted of
Elder Painter and I doing bad lip-syncs to music we could listen too, our
curfew was 3 hours early. The Last day in Ephrata consisted of packing,
"buying" a carry-on duffel from the thrift store (which they let me
take because we were going to toss it), and saying goodbyes to Alva and Bev.
Anyhoo, Ellensburg, town wise, is pretty nice! Driving down from Ephrata to
Quincy to Ellensburg was un-eventful. And dangerous. Not really, but Elder
Shugart, the AP driving the van, got several "check-your-speed"
call-outs from Tiwi. Not the worst that could happen, but still.
Elder Summit is a pretty cool
guy! He's been out only three months, so I'm greenie busting him, or being a
"mom" as mission lingo goes. After brief get-to-know you, I learned
he's an experienced martial-artist, can manipulate other folks's anger, and has
a habit of talking in accents. He hails from Logan, and from the sounds of it,
his family isn't the best on keeping him updated. There were a lot of
personality traits between the two of us that needed hammering out, but we
managed. Work wise, we are about to drop the nuke of member-missionary work in
Ellensburg. Learned from Elder Summit that member-socializing was practically
non-existent, let alone effective member missionary work. And so that gave us a
vision to work towards.
So, to begin work, a few fun
things happened. For one, Jenny, our on date in the area, cancelled her baptism
the day of. Elder Summit and Rozencrantz (who just returned home to Vegas)
found her and started teaching her. Evidently she's facing a lot of social
adversity about joining the church. She has a mental condition of some kind,
and so we pray that she can be strong and overcome her fears. On more brighter
notes this past week we were invited to dinner by a PMF (part member family). The father, Jim,
expressed to us that he wants to be baptized and sealed to his wife in the
temple. Hmm....oh snap. He came to church the next day.
Speaking of church, I was
asked by Bishop Schilling to bear my testimony. He wanted me to emphasize
member-missionary work. I had a rough idea of what I was going to say, opting
for the formal approach of professionalism. After some thought though, I
decided to lax a little. And so when I walked up to the pulpit, I began by
saying, "Brothers and sisters, Aloha!" And they responded
accordingly, surprisingly. Right now our objective is to build member trust and
relationships, so I figured that was a good way to show I wasn't a robot. And I
think it worked too! Later on that night we went and saw the Elders Quorum
President and his family. The thought of member-visits were blank to Elder
Summit's mind, but we simply talked to them about their lives, dreams, visions,
etc. Shared a spiritual thought, and at the end of it, they had names come to
their minds about people they could share the gospel with! OOOOOHHHHH SNAP!!
And they seemed decently solid too!
Yeah, we need to do a lot of
work. Right now our schedules are taken up by 3 hours of community service,
daily. I'm all for service, but...I'd rather be focused on doing my current
duty. But with the Lord's time we will be able to accomplish it. Pray like it
depends of Heavenly Father, and then work like it depends on us. That's the
key, so we can't let go now. Love you all, and remember that we are all
involved in this work, even if being an example to others, that light rubs off!
Love you!
Elder Michael Camit
No comments:
Post a Comment