This week in Lomas I was honestly rejected more frequently and more harshly than any other week in my whole mission. I have never run into so many people with as hard of hearts as this week.. Hopefully we could plant some very good seeds in some hearts that will someday produce the fruit of the Gospel. But at least for right now I haven't gotten to see much of that.
Blanca was someone that we had visited last week and she accepted that we could go back for a second visit. To tell the truth the second visit was not what I hoped for. She started telling us that the bible is perfect and that we don't need another book. She told us that there are no such things as angels, and that if an angel should appear than we should doubt it. We don't need prophets either. We tried to reason a bit with her but she didn't let us talk at all. She finished the appointment of an hour and a half talking for half an hour. It was a little bit rough, but we left her with her Book of Mormon and she said that she is going to read it, so hopefully that can soften her heart up a bit.
The Porras family is progressing very well now. They are reading the Book of Mormon and have already finished 1 Nephi. So that is pretty cool. I remember that the first time that I went there the sister said that she would never read a book because she doesn't like to read, and now she's the one that's reading the most. She has a ton of questions about the plan of Salvation and I hope that the new missionaries can answer the questions that they have so that they can progress and get baptized.
I am now with Elder Johnson. He's from Sacramento California. He has about 4 months in the mission. As we have been talking we have come to the conclusion that we are almost identical. He is also going to study Computer engineering, he ran cross country, played tennis, and about 3 other sports as a youngster. He plays piano, he took a ton of AP classes, and only had to go to the MTC for 3 weeks as well. It's pretty crazy. I think that we are going to work well together and I hope that we will be able to go far to do everything that God wants from us. He seems like a great missionary and I hope to be able to help him be even better. I am Zone Leader again and I am going to teach Elder Jones (another Elder) how to be a zone leader. So we are separated again. Hopefully it will go well in the zone. There are 14 missionaries again, so plenty of work to do.
I am excited, there is a real teaching circle here and it looks like it is a bit more easy to find investigators. I hope that we can keep doing that and have a lot of success.
Honestly I was very surprised yesterday to hear several members tell me things like "you are the first good missionary we've had here in a long time" or "I've learned a lot from watching you work hard without investigators" or "you always have a good attitude" or things like that. When I started thinking about it with some of the members we realized that in my time here the members have started to accompany missionaries to visits, they have started to do their home teaching, and the ward attendance has gone up about 15 or 20 people. And all of the members attribute that to me. I honestly was a little sad about how little I had achieved there, but I now realized that I did have a lot of success there, and that thanks to my work the other missionaries that go now will have a much easier time.
I don't say that to brag, I say it because I was humbled to hear it, and I appreciate that even without "success" the members there will remember me as a successful missionary. It was great to hear those complements. And I hope to be able to achieve it again here in Del Valle
I love you all and hope you have a good week.
Love,
Elder Allred
No comments:
Post a Comment