mmmm... not today

Everything here has been calming down a lot since the Holidays are over. It has been really nice that people are back home and have time to do things now. We had a really good District Meeting this week. We set some goals on what we should be doing better as a district. We came up with a lot of good ideas. One of the things we wanted to do was to find a new investigator every day.

We all got really excited about the goals we set and we were all ready to go do a lot of work. That night, at the end of the day, we still hadn't found anyone and it was like 8:50, so we had to go home soon if we weren't in a lesson. We had to go drop off our member and as we dropped him off, we decided we should try to find someone quick. We looked up and down the streets and nobody was there. Our member told us we should knock on some doors quick. Knocking isn't our usual method of finding but we were in desperate need to find, so we were willing to give it a shot. We tried a few doors and nobody answered and, as we are walking back towards our member’s house, the member said we should try one last door. We go up and knock on the door and an older man answered and asked what we wanted. We told him who we were and why we were there. We asked him if he was religious at all, and he just starts telling us about how his wife had died only a few days ago. We said a prayer with him and we were able to talk about the plan of salvation a little bit with him. It was super powerful and it was cool to see how Heavenly Father had guided us to someone who needed us at that time. He was super nice but he was telling us about how through all of his recent trials he had forgot about religion and didn't really think about being able to see his wife again. At the end, he said he was glad that God had sent us to him to help him. It was really cool. We didn't get to meet with him again because we had to pass him off to the Family Ward Elders, but it was nice to talk to him and see instant results of our work. Even if he doesn't get baptized or anything, we know we gave him the comfort he really needed at that time and that we helped him.

We have had some fun experiences with trying to find every day. We do way better at talking to people and we have found a lot in the last week because that has been one of our goals. The other day we found three in a day. I think we are able to do that just because we have finding on our minds and we will go way out of our way, now, to talk to people. 

We had a big rainstorm early in the week. It is funny because it doesn't seem like California is equipped to handle lots of rain, because all the water just piles up everywhere because the lack of storm drains. It was fun. We had a really good attitude the whole time we were out and about. Good news, my shoes held up the whole day so they are just as waterproof as advertised. It was funny because we planned for an all walking morning on the day it was pouring rain. During the morning, as we were walking around, we decided to knock on a door that had a nice covered porch. We knocked on the door and told her who we were and then asked her a question about Heavenly Father's love for families. She just stared at us for like 8 seconds then just said "mmmmm not today," then closed the door. It was really funny. I think it just threw her off that two soaking wet missionaries were talking to her about families. We didn't try back the next day because I think the ‘not today’ was more of a ‘not ever’, but it was still really funny.

The days seem like they are flying by now. It seems weird that I am going to Thailand soon. I have started reading the Book of Mormon in Thai. I am about half way through 1st Nephi and I have been finding that that is how I am learning words the best. I write like 20 words down each time I read everyday, then take the time later to look them up in the dictionary. It helps because the words are repeated a lot so I am learning a lot and getting them repeated a bunch as I keep reading.

We had a nice week this week and I am interested to see what happens in the next few weeks while I am here.

Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ เซนื