Ha! Just joking, this was probably one of the most interesting weeks ever, it's hopeless to fit everything in here but I will try to put a few things in at least :)
You will probably not read this whole thing, and then it will be your loss cause this contains some very juicy stories!
Monday was fun, we had District p-day as usual. The Zone Leaders also came which was great! We played a bunch of games and just hung out with the ZLs. In the evening we had some street contacting and a lesson with someone named Adrian. So we went over and started teaching Adrian on his porch. When we were about halfway through our lesson things suddenly changed drastically.
A dude named Kelly emerged from the house via wheel chair and planted himself on the porch. I had a bad feeling about his presence, but we were talking about repentance at the time, so we asked him how he would define repentance. He said, "I probably know more about repentance than you!" And immediately we knew we were in for it. The entire mood changed immediately, and Adrian slipped away. Kelly started to bash us on all sorts of things about our beliefs, and so I just kind of relaxed against a pole and tuned him out. Bashers are usually pretty hilarious to watch, I love seeing how inexperienced they are and yet how hard they try hahaha
After a little bit of him bashing us on the usual dumb stuff, he suddenly switched gears and said to my comp, "You need to smile more." And then he just went off on how Elder Maisey was too serious and that if he went around not smiling like that then people would think we were Satan worshippers. What made it worse is I was trying to hold in my laughter the whole time so Kelly kept on gesturing to me and telling Elder Maisey to smile more like me and that I was the perfect example of what he should be doing haha--the thing is Elder Maisey usually does smile, so I don't know what Kelly was on, he only wasn't smiling cause of the "Oh shoot this is a bash" feeling. Anyway so I started trying to get us out of there, but the problem is everytime I was about to say something and dip he grabbed Elder Maisey's marked up Book of Mormon and started gesturing with it animatedly as he spoke. He would then give it back eventually, and then when we thought we were free he would take it and gesture to something again! It was hilarious, so finally I just aluded to a non-existent lesson we needed to head to and Kelly said, "You don't have a lesson, you just want me to stop railing on your companion" haha--he was right but I was insistent and we left. Elder Maisey and I then spent the rest of the night debunking everything he had said to each other as revenge :)
Tuesday we had District Council with the ZLs, and it was a lot of fun. I trained everyone on talking with everyone, and we had a lot of good discussion. After district council Elder Maisey and I went and did comp study at Subway--which was a mistake. Because of unwanted scents wafting up to us, our feet took us and got us sandwiches. They were pretty good, Subway has a weird new menu though.
After our studies, we walked around the neighborhoods of Hooks and taught a sweet girl named Dulce (haha) and found a couple new people to teach! In the evening we did a bunch of street contacting in New Boston and taught a phone lesson while standing in a park which was really fun! After that we started walking again and we had another lesson in 5 minutes. As we were walking to our next stopping point for our phone lesson we ran into this dude named Anthony, and he wanted to hear a scripture, so we quickly shared one with him and then said we had to go. We called Allie and then started our lesson with her. While we were talking with her this dude with the most boosted bass I've ever heard drove up and yelled out to us. So we apologized to Allie and said we would be back in a second, and muted ourselves. Then we talked to this dude and he gave us giant water bottles and kept insisting that he should buy us some food too haha--he was super nice but he just kept insisting on giving us stuff and we were just trying to get back to Allie. He finally accepted that we were good and drove off. And immediately after he drove off another lady drove up and started talking with us haha--she's an inactive member so we felt like we needed to talk with her. She invited us over for dinner! After finally finishing our conversation with her we unmuted and finished teaching Allie. The whole encounter was super fun haha--We dealt with like 4 separate situations within a 7 minute span.
Wednesday was no car day which was fun! So we were on bikes all day. Our ZLs told everyone to wear sunscreen and drink lots of water cause no car day was also going to be around 105-108⁰F. I definitely put on sunscreen, as I defintely always do. ;) we had a blast biking around New Boston, it also happened to be the day they were re-doing the road which it made it even more of an adventure cause we were just going through construction zones. Hopefully we were on the right side of the cones, it wasn't clear at all haha--a member drove us to Hooks and we had a great Lasagna lunch there. Brother Garrett is insanely good at playing guitar.
Throughout the afternoon and evening our Zone chat was full of miracles! Our ZLs said each companionship should put at least one miracle in the chat during no car day, and each companionship did more than that! It was super cool to see the Zone chat so active, it was a lot of fun! Throughout the afternoon we had every one of our lessons fall through, even our phone lessons. Then as we were going back to our place, someone happened to be out on her porch, so we talked with her and she's super interested! It definitely put us in a good mood, and our night was even better! We found 4 other people in the evening, and had a blast just biking around. The best part is seeing the surprise on peoples faces when you screech to a stop and talk with them haha
Thursday was nice, we did weekly planning, and then drove to below Leary for member dinner. On our drive back it started pouring which was lots of fun. When we got back to New Boston it was so nice but it was still sprinkling so nobody was out. Which is fine, except that we had planned to do street contacting. So we werent sure what to do. We decided to pray that a few people would be out anyway despite the rain and our prayers got answered! We found a few people who happened to be going from their cars to their house right when we came by! It was also lots of fun cause the temperature was soo nice.
Friday was also super cool, I found someone on Facebook in the morning. In the afternoon we stopped by a lady named Cathy, and we taught her and put her on date to be baptized! After that we went up to her neighbor's apartment and taught her! She's really interested in our message, her Grandma was a member and she likes the missionaries. The main reason she hasn't really joined the church or anything is because she said life just got super busy and she thought she didn't have time for God. But now she's realizing her mistake. It was super cool to teach her.
In the evening we were walking around in our usual evening street contacting neighborhood, and we went the longest time without finding someone new to teach. It was fun to walk and talk, but the whole time we were remembering that we needed to meet our daily finding goal of 4. So we just kept going, trusting that whoever we were meant to talk to would be put in our path. After a couple hours it was time to go back to our car, so we started walking back. Literally right as we got to about 50 yards from our car we run into this group of people! We talked with them and gave them copies of the Book of Mormon. We asked if we could meet again and they were very hesitant to say yes, but then suddenly Anthony pops out of nowhere and says, "You should talk with these guys, they are called of God and are super cool!" It was awesome cause then these people brightened up and are now interested in meeting again next week! Also we were able to meet our finding goal for the day which was awesome.
On Saturday we went and helped with the pioneer day activity in Texarkana. We ate some burgers, and manned the blood drive tables. When we returned home we did some stopbys, and taught someone named JJ. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and then talked about Baptism! He wants to be baptized so we put him on date. Apparently everytime he's been about to be baptized into various churches he's moved right before it can happen haha--so we will hope that doesn't happen again :)
In the evening we ran into Anthony, and we didn't really have time to talk long, so we just said a prayer with him. As we were leaving I felt like I needed to bring up baptism, so we did and put him on date! It was super cool.
Okay here's where things get interesting. As we were going back to our car we get a call from someone I will call Brother William Williamson. He said he's with JustServe and works for the Church, and wanted us to come over for dinner the next day to talk. As we were talking with him immediately all of my red flags went up. But we agreed to come over for dinner the next day, cause he seemed to be telling the truth, even though everything about it seemed fishy. Stay tuned for what happens on Sunday.
Sunday we had church and Brother Williamson was there (he's been coming to church in New Boston for the last couple weeks bit he usually dips after the Sacrament so thats why we had never talked with him). He invited our Elders Quorum President to our dinner that night to, which was a relief cause we had a bad feeling about going alone.
So evening comes and we start driving over there with President Pierce, and as we are driving we all just kind of nervously talked. None of us were really sure what or why he wanted to talk with us. So we drove up to the address and it's literally a metal warehouse that is a church of some sort. On the lawn sitting in chairs are Brother Williamson and a Reverend of some sort. We were perplexed, we parked and went over to talk with them. They brought out a couple chairs for us and then they just started to talk. President Pierce asked Brother Williamson about how he became a member of our church, and he shared a ton of his life's stories with us. He's lived a very interesting life, and his conversion story started with him being prompted not to shoot someone. He's one of those people that just talks and talks and never gets to the point. As we were talking slowly more and more people started to arrive. The whole time I was just on the alert, I can get very paranoid haha--like for example he gave us water and so I waited until he had drank some before I had any haha
Some of these people were of various faiths, but none of them were members besides Brother Williamson. After am hour of talking he told us to talk about Coriantum suddenly with these people. So we did, and it went fine--but just everything about the experience seemed off. It seemed like these people were mostly coming to get some food cause they would go inside and eat a bit and then come out and sit. We finally got him to get to the point, and basically what he's trying to do is start up a thing where he gives out food and supplies and then while people are there he has either the missionaries or someone from another church share a spiritual thought. The way he described it is, "other churches don't have the Priesthood so we bring the Priesthood to them." So who knows what THAT means. Here's a few other things he said when we were talking with him:
"I'm married to the Priesthood"
"A lot of members suck so don't be like them"
"I was born where the white people were the poor ones"
"Everyone who comes to my home leaves my home black"
"I've had 7 different wives, cause whenever one of them leaves the church we get divorced"
So basically he seems to have good intentions but he wants to trick people into missionary messages or something. And he had kind of tricked us into even coming cause he hadn't said anything about the other people. So I got us out of there and President Pierce reported him to the Bishop, and we are not supposed to involve ourselves in whatever he is doing. He would have to talk with the Stake President and get authorization to do anything else. It's super weird though cause he claims to be doing this under the direction of some area seventies for our area. So we aren't sure what on earth is going on, but it was definitely an adventure!
-Elder Nielson
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