Hi interested parties,
This week was great, but long. Monday Elder Stroud had a dentist appointment in Shreveport so we did that and our shopping in the morning, while the other Elders got stuck helping someone move, who had told them it would only be an hour or two and then proceeded to keep then for 6 hours instead. Which completely destroyed their pday. Moral of the story is no service on pday haha
I don't think some people realize that missionaries have schedules too. We met up with the ZLs though and ate lunch as a District at Buffalo Wild Wings! Elder Stroud's mom payed for us all which was super nice! Between the 8 of us we ate over 130 wings. Monday evening was spent in Springhill visiting people at darkened but partying apartment complexes.
On Tuesday we walked the dogs in the morning. This time as we walked by one of the houses one of the dogs was tied to a cinder block. As we walked by it ran towards us and our dogs dragging the cinder block with it! It was so funny seeing this small dog struggle and make slow progress running towards us dragging a piece of concrete haha--it was like it was moving in slow motion. After a couple loups (British spelling) with different dogs it pulled so hard that it dragged the cinder block into the road and broke free! Now there's just a Lone cinder block out there. 😥
Our afternoon consisted of the usual tasks and contacting, and we were actually able to get a full comp study in for once! In the evening we met a lady named Autumn who's really interested in the Gospel! Autumn's often are. We also encountered several porch goblins once it got dark outside. Sometimes as one walks down a dark street one then catches a glimpse of a dark figure on a porch. After calling out in an appropriate manner, the response is often a raspy garbled (but friendly!) piece of nonsense. In such a case whoever waved the friendly hello usually sheepishly mumbles a "God bless you" and continues walking hoping the response addressed the goblin's response.
We also had a great lesson with Lois on her porch! She loved the Book of Mormon video we shared. Then we went for our lesson with Jarriod but he was "very busy." Just so you know "very busy" means that someone is watching some TV alone in bed. I just learned this fact! So we dropped in on Randy and Tatyanan who haven't been responding to us and ended up reading the Book of Mormon with them! Tot was very rudely playing a video game the whole time though tsk tsk
Wednesday the Minden Elders came up for exchanges, and we all went to do some service for a less-active member named Sister Smith! The Millers came too, and we spent the morning clearing out her carport, tidying it up, blowing out the leaves, and clearning out her drain gutters! (We were definitely on the ground the whole time ;) Then we got out the power-washer to clean off her patio, vents, and door. As always when young men get their hands on a power-washer, we maybe had a little TOO much fun signing our names in the concrete and so forth. Sister Smith made us a delicious lunch afterwards, consisting of Spaghetti, salad, punch, garlic bread, jello salad, and brownies! In the afternoon I exchanged with Elder Lloyd, and we had a really powerful lesson with Erik Russell! We read Enos, and then I felt prompted to give him a blessing, so we did. Then after dispatching a wasp nest, I made some calls to finalize the ads for our blood drive. The evening was fun, we double-worked Magnolia and had a super fun lesson with Gary on his porch about the Restoration!
We also encountered a girl on the campus walking around in a shark costume! Which always brightens the day. She was really nice too, as Im sure real sharks are. We met a lady in the hood who tries to give us $2 and didn't seem to know why she was doing it haha--probably drunk. After 9 pm an intense Jenga game started. At its crowning point it reached great heights while resting on a single block. Elder Stroud chopped the block out super fast and the tower remained! It was very impressive.
Thursday morning we drove to Texarkana for zone conference, and here are some of the things I liked, before I jump into some of the Udder Drivel (U.D.) that wad also said.
The good:
▪︎ they talked about unique finding methods, and gave us lots of good ideas
▪︎ they did scavenger hunt where we had to find all the hidden toy dinosaurs hidden throughout the church
▪︎ they talked about the jot of missionary work
▪︎ some cool stories that President Taylor shared about finding lost people (even if he did dramatize it way more than was necessary)
▪︎ a fantastic musical number!
▪︎ good salad at the lunch portion of the conference
▪︎ some really good clips of the apostles talking about PMG were shared, these were excellent
Now for the U.D.
▪︎ the APs saying that you don't have faith if you have been focusing on only a few of your favorite finding methods. Absolute nonsense. Of course everyone needs to grow, stretch themselves, and branch out! Everyone is always improving. But to call people that aren't improved to the place the APs want them "without faith"?! Not only is that prideful and ridiculous to judge the faith of another, but it's also the OPPOSITE of what you want to do if you want to inspire righteous action. Hmpf.
▪︎ they told us the better we are at finding, the more we will baptize. False. It's a related concept, but is very far from true that finding = baptisms. X + y does not always = z. In fact it rarely does. There's a lot more than finding that goes into a baptism. Finding is worth nothing without commitment.
▪︎ President Taylor saying "if you ain't tracting you ain't a missionary." If this was said jokingly, it would have been okay (ha ha ha yeah we get it in your day thats all missionaries did), but this did not seem like it was the case. This statement is so wrong and ridiculous that only the naive would have no problem with it. Tracting is the least effective way to do missionary work. (Here at least) And if you want to do it then go ahead but to say that those who don't arent missionaries is preposterous
▪︎ they pulled out a bunch if finding stats and compared us to the other missions in the Area. Which goes all the way to Nevada and more. Isn't the oldest rule in the book not to compare? Aren't we supposed to compare ourselves not to others who are in very different places and circumstances? I immediately lose a little trust in those who compare to others to manipulate results
I could go on and on, but those are a few of my frustrations. Despite these issues, Zone Conference was quite good. Very artificial but good nonetheless. I loved the Stake President's message on the Atonement! Before we left Texarkana President Taylor told everyone to find someone in Texarkana to be taught before leaving back to their areas. So we went to a gas station and found someone and got their number, and gave it to the Texarkana missionaries. Its sooo easy to get a phone number, and 90% of the time they are a waste of time and arent interested even if they will talk to you. But it's all worth it for those who actually listen!
Thursday evening it was raining all night we did a lot of driving around, but still had a very successful night! Also I love the rain at night time. We found a lady named Dina who actually hugged the Book of Mormon when we gave her one! It was really cool. We also taught Sonya, and talked to a bunch of referrals.
Friday we had interviews with President Taylor, bur I accidentally read the interview schedule wrong and thought the end time was the start time haha! So at 9 we were studying and then we got a text saying "where are you?" So we quickly got in the car and arrived an hour later :)
After our interviews President Taylor told us about a time when on his mission his companion was feeling really depressed, and then one day they taught this really attractive girl. At the end of the lesson she just went up and started kissing his companion with no warning!! Needless to say (Ive been itching to use that phrase for some reason) it cured his depression for good!
Friday evening was crazy, as we were stopping by Brenda we say this guy run past us, and then behind him we heard a bang! We turned and say that the guy had been tazed and two policeman were arresting him! We weren't close enough to see who, but we heard yelling and swearing and claims of innocence. Although if you are innocent it's not smart to run from the police haha--We started walking around the block to see better and I heard "Elder Nielson! Tell them I'm innocent!" I looked and sure enough it was Tyre! I didn't know what to do and didn't want to get involved so we just walked by. It was so crazy haha--I don't know what he did, but hopefully nothing too bad. :()
Then we went and tried to talk to some people who tried to ask us what color of skin Jesus had. When we said we didn't know this big black guy who was obviously drunk was getting all in our face about it saying if we are going to talk to them we HAVE to know things we can't just not know. So we left. We met a cool guy named Romero and a girl named Shaterica who are interested though! Had an awesome lesson with French as well, and he's very open to more scripture.
Saturday we walked the dogs again and by the end we were ready to toss them into the forest haha-- in the afternoon we taught a very sad-looking guy about the Book of Mormon. We had some amazing food at Mulekick which is a pizza restaurant with the Masses. We walked around and visited a guy named Tay, and turns out a guy named Reph Grer lives there instead hahaha--or at least that's what we think his name is! He told us all about how he's 72 and has all these health challenges, seemed to be a lonely guy. He said we can stop by anytime! We also met with the Millers and turns put Charlien and Juan have both disappeared. Bad. I'm sure we will find them though.
On Sunday Juan showed up! So he wasn't lost long. We also had Mary show up who isn't a member and interested in joining once she can stop smoking! We had a great potluck fall feast afterwards and after a long afternoon of meetings a good evening walking around in the Misty night!
-Abe
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