4-15-13

Had my first baptism on Saturday. It was good, not the I really felt like I was apart of it. Robert is definitely an interesting person. He knows the church is true, he just holds himself to a very high standard. We did another exchange this last week where a set of sisters came into our area and worked for the day. We went on campus for a little while and ran into some people who were definitely against the church. We talked to this one guy for probably 20 minutes or so, definitely not opened to hear what we had to say. Luckily Sis Allen is more experienced and was able to handle the situation pretty well.

I think I told you about James last week and about how he was able to develop a testimony of modern day prophets. We met with him this week and I was able to commit him to pray about getting baptized on May 25th. It was a way sweet lesson, probably one of my favorite so far even though we stood up the entire time in this little kitchen (long story). We had a lot of lessons fall through again this week. We have a lot of potential investigators but none of them are getting back to us, which is really frustrating. So we have the potential to be teaching a lot more lessons.

 

Testimony during sacrament yesterday was fantastic. This branch has so many solid people in it. I may have said this before, so sorry, but I'm amazed at how willing the members are to come teaching with us. We have lessons with us at every lesson. I have a hard time asking people to come because we literally text 10+ people a day to see if they can teach with us. It's been really draining and I feel pretty obnoxious most the time. However, I've also seen how important it is to have members there every lesson. The investigators are able to feel much more involved when they already know members.

I went to my first Why I Believe last night. It's a fireside where investigators or recent converts get up and share their testimony. About 10 minutes before it started my companions and I were in the hall and running out to the car. We got a call from one of the assistants (who was in the chapel) asking if I could play the piano. I said yes. Then they told me the opening song was "All Creatures of Our God and King". Probably one of the top 10 most difficult songs to play and I think I had maybe played it twice. Basically I dropped like half the notes and was only playing the tenor part. Oh well. The elders were still nice enough to compliment me on my playing. Getting together with other missionaries is the highlight of my week. Yeah my companions are nice and everthing, but when I get in a group with other missionaries it is like a boost of energy. I feel so much more motivation to be a missionary.

 

Yesterday we had about an hour of extra time waiting for a lesson at the church. We decided to go walk along the river to talk to people. We took a member with us, Rochelle. Sis Donaldson and Sis Clark went together and I went with Rochelle. Rochelle speaks Spanish because she served a mission in Chile (the same one as Hannah). We came across this hispanic family and I told Rochelle it was all her. She quickly got into the role, suprisingly I was able to follow some of the conversation. It was cool to watch though.