Busy Week

January 11, 2016

Dear Family,

This was actually a really fun week. A lot happened. 

Monday. Normal P-Day stuff. At night we had an... interesting... family home evening. Elder Walker and I about had a heart attack. Over the past few weeks we've been reading out of this Mormon history book that has a bunch of facts that most people don't know. Tonight's topic was... African and Native Americans. 

Tuesday. Sis. Rodenberg referred us to a good friend of hers who's been friends with the Rodenberg kids forever. They've had multiple gospel conversations and this referral agrees with everything they've talked about. Sis. Rodenberg told us to go to her house and literally ask her why she's not a member. So we did. We went up to her house, knocked on the door, she answered, we had a fun conversation and we asked why she wasn't a member. It actually went really well. She basically said "I don't know" so we offered to teach her the lessons and she accepted. We told Sis. Rodenberg and she offered for us to teach her friend in her home. So we should be teaching more member home lessons soon. Yay!

Wednesday. We walked a lot. We met with Sis. G and taught her about temples. Her new year's resolution is to not argue with anyone. We had a good temple lesson. She was baptized about 6 months ago after 20 years of investigating. She's super solid though. She makes birthday cards for everyone like 8 months in advance. And she puts a lot of effort into them. Due to a car accident she's confined to an electric wheel chair and she rode that from her home to the church yesterday in 19 degree weather. Apparently that's "not cold" for her. It takes her about 15 minutes to get from her house to the church in the wheel chair. Later we did service for that other church and they gave us shirts for free. They're high quality shirts too.

Thursday. District meeting at the cabin. One of the Elder's started a fire with gasoline (idiot). Afterwards I went on exchange with Elder Hammond. We saw Sis. Gr and continued to try to bring her to church. She's having a rough time with the loss of her husband. We went in without much of a lesson plan and we wound up having a fantastic lesson on how the Holy Ghost can comfort us. It's been a while since I've had a completely Spirit driven lesson like that. Most times we go in with a plan and teach the lesson. This time we didn't have much of a plan and wound up having a great lesson. We ate at Chick-fil-a because Hammond LOVES Chick-fil-a. Elder Hammond and I played chess at the end of the day and he beat me :(

Friday. Exchanged back. Did our weekly planning. And met with J & L. They don't really have much of an interest in the gospel right now but for some reason they LOVE the church. L ran most of the Christmas party we had a while back and it was a HUGE success. They do so much for us. We've talked to her about the gospel, baptism, priesthood, the BoM, etc. She knows pretty much everything we have to teach but for some reason she doesn't want to join the church yet. I have no idea what's keeping her. So far my working theory is that because she "has a degree in Theology," she thinks she's fine. We didn't know this until recently, but they actually don't read the BoM. They've said they do in the past, but when they were questioned about the Liahona, they didn't know what that was, meaning they don't read. It's kinda crazy how vital reading the book is.

Saturday. We met with a less active named Ms. C today. I've tried to contact her a few times but have been unsuccessful until today. She lives a little ways away so we don't get many opportunities to try her. But we tried her today and wound up talking for an hour on her porch. She's a super nice lady. She's LA because someone offended her but she knows that that's just one person and one person doesn't represent the whole church. Her house is an extremely old house. It used to be a Civil War hospital for both sides. She was completely fine with talking about church. I feel like we won't have to work with her very hard to get her to come back. Afterwards, we tried a referral in the same area. When we typed the address in my GPS it took us throughout a bunch of freshly paved Kentucky back roads. It felt like a race track. It was actually quite fun to drive. It was a 10 mile loop and when we got to the referrals house we realized it was just a quarter of a mile behind from where we started. The GPS took us on a route that didn't require a U-Turn. If we had U-Turned, we would have gotten to the referrals house a lot sooner but wouldn't have driven those fun back roads. I guess that's what you get when you buy a GPS.

Sunday. Elder Walker and I gave talks in church. They both went well. We both talked about how important it is for members to help missionaries. The Rodenbergs had us over for lunch. Later we met with Mr T. He was baptized about 4 months ago and he got the Aaronic Priesthood last Sunday. We went over and taught him about the sacrament prayers and got him to agree to help out. At the end of the day, Elder Walker and I played chess and I beat him. Yay!

Along with the BoM highlight there's an activity similar to it in the back on Chapter 10 in PMG. It says to go through Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and 3 Nephi and observe the questions Jesus asked. I'm going through and noting questions Jesus asked, questions people asked Jesus, and the responses to both. So far I'm only a few chapters into Matthew but I'm having fun with it. 

I've reached a point where it's rare for me to find an awkward situation anymore. I've had so many awkward experiences, big and small, that I'm probably immune to awkwardness. But now that I've said that, something's going to happen that will tell me that I'm not done with awkward situations anymore.

Have a great week! I love you!

-Elder Ben

I got the shirt from that church we do service at. It has Isaiah 58:10 and
the words "To The Max" below it. They gave it to us for free.
The pants are a Christmas Eve present from the Rodenbergs. CLOTHES! :D

This is a glass chess set that we found in the apartment.

District Meeting again!