This week has been great! We have spent a lot of time
working with less actives and trying to find people who are ready to hear the
gospel. O and M went ghost this whole last week and when we finally talked
to them again she said, "I am too busy, I'm catholic, and I do not want to
change. Please do not come back. Door slam." It was kind of sad. We were
bummed on how they totally accepted the message and then didn't actually care.
This is the first actual person who dropped us. We get rejected all the time
just knocking doors but this is the first time I've been rejected after picking
someone up as a New Investigator. The other people we picked up last week
haven't made any progress. We are still trying to set up return appointments
with the people we have already met.
This week,
we planned in a full day of lessons with people and other meetings and
appointments. Except, nobody was there. So we literally just started visiting
less actives. We went over to one family and talked to them for about 40
minutes. We talked to them about why they weren't coming and how we wanted to
help them get to the temple. We committed all of them to come to church. Their
son has a girlfriend who is also a LA.
We went over
to her house to visit and he was with her. We talked to them for a while and
figured out that they want to get married in the temple. We quickly explained
that for them to get hitched in the temple, they will need to attend church.
They both said they were going to come. While at her house, her uncle, who
moved from the DR 6 months ago was there. He is a member with a current temple
recommend just had "No way" to get to church. As of right now, we now
have a total of 7 LA who have committed to come to church.
We then went
to go knock on a street. While walking, we saw a man and went to go talk with
him. We started the whole missionary thing, “Hey, we are missionaries from our
church, and…” He cut us off and said, “Yeah, I know… I’m a member. I moved here
from the Hartford ward about a year ago.” We kept talking and I found out that
he knows a bunch of the members from the Spanish Branch. We committed him to
come to church and said we would get him a ride.
We kept
going throughout the day meeting various people who weren’t very interested in
the gospel. When I realized we were on another street with a less active. We
stopped by their house for the like 14th time in the space of 2
weeks. They did the same routine. Come to the door, yell through the door, “Who
is it?” We reply, “The missionaries.” No one ever opens the door again. This
time we just said who we were looking for instead of saying who we were. The
guy, L., who we were looking for opened the door and we started talking with
him. Just then, his mom, who is also a member, pulled up and let us come into
their house. We started talking about the Temple and how they can be together
for forever. They showed us how they randomly found a card in a book of the
Salt Lake Temple and how they said they wanted to go. We committed their whole
family, of 6, to come to church. We now have invited and committed 14 people to
attend church. Another one of her sons is going into the army. He asked
this question, “Will I go to Hell if I kill people while I am in the army.” We
pointed him to Moroni in the Book of Alma and told him that he should pray
about his decision. We also said that it depends on his intentions and reasons
for going to war. Another one of his questions was, “If I die while I am in the
Army, will I be able to see my family again?” We told him about how they could
all be sealed together in the temple and that he can and will see his family
again. They were all super interested!! It was awesome.
The next day
at church. Only 2 out of the 14 people came. But, 2 came!!! They ditched right out of Sacrament meeting and we haven’t been able to
get in contact with them since then, but they still came.
Later after
church, we went with Jay Halterman, the Priest 1st Assistant, and
Brother Taylor, a guy who served his mission in Guatemala and is in the Young
men group, to all those LA houses and invited them to a youth retreat.
Basically, mini ward youth conference. All of them said they would come so we
are hoping that they actually do and that they will have their interest in the
gospel sparked!
We picked up
3 NI this week, but 2 of them were English speakers so we passed them off to
the other Elders. The other girl is named G. She was outside when we
started talking with her. We found out in a matter of minutes that she was sad because
her Grandma had passed away recently. We shared part of the Plan of Salvation
and both testified that she would be able to see her family again. She just
started crying and it took a couple of minutes for her to gain her composure.
She didn’t come to church like she had said but we are hoping to stop by soon
and speak with her again.
When the
storm came on Wednesday afternoon, our car wasn’t doing too hot, so we had to
come in, 15 minutes after we came inside, the mission told us that the Governor
of CT had asked all the citizens to stay in if they could. So we got inside
around 5. We got some good things done while inside. The next day, we did some
shoveling for people. We were driving past a house and saw a guy just staring
at the snow he had to shovel. The big plows just plow the streets and leave
the huge piles of snow in front of people’s houses. We asked him if he needed
any help and he said that it would be great. Turns out he was 12 and his mom
had asked him to go out. It reminded me of all the times mom and dad woke me up
in the morning to go shovel, but now, I shovel like a beast;) We literally
cleared this pile of snow and the whole driveway in a matter of minutes. We
started talking to this 12 year old about religion and he said
that his family was looking to go to a church. Good thing the Waterbury chapel
is just up the street! We told him who we were and what
our church believed and he told us to hang on while he told his mom to come out
and talk to us. We talked with her for a couple minutes and set up a time to
come back to talk with her and the rest of her family. It was awesome!!
Shoveling literally brings so many cool people to talk to!
Other than
that, not much is happening!! Love you all.
Elder
Bushman
No comments:
Post a Comment