Week 57

Wednesday morning President Cleveland and the assistants came and gave a training on how to do church tours. We will now spend a half hour everyday practicing so we will be prepared to take investigators and members in a couple months. The previous week we had gotten a couple referrals from a member of people who live in their same complex. I wasn't super hopeful about the first one. The quickly told us her and her husband attend the Methodist church but let us in to talk anyways. At first it was just small talk; she asked questions about missionary life and so on. Then she asked us the golden question "how did you come to know that your church is true?" Both Sister Hales and I shared what you could call our conversion story. She began to ask validity questions about the Book of Mormon (ex. the verse in Revelations and there being no more prophets). I was nervous because it had been awhile since I had gotten these kinds of questions. But we handled them like a champ and she definitely felt the Spirit. She even said we could come back! The next was this Brazilian woman. She let us in right away and we found out that the elders had been over there before and left her with a Restoration pamphlet. We explained to her more about the Book of Mormon and committed her to read in 3 Nephi. I felt like I was in a foreign place talking to her. Unfortunately she is going back to Brazil for the summer and won't be back until August. We are hoping to get her a Book of Mormon in Portuguese this week. Both of those teaching moments were such tender mercies. I felt like we hadn't had many opportunities to teach since coming here, or in the last five months.

On Friday we went to teach Hongtao. We met him last week while tracting and he shared with us that he believes in Dao. Basically it's like there needs to be a balance in life. He told us that he had Jehovah Witness come for a year and they couldn't convert him but that we could come back. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into! He is probably one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. He doesn't deny there is a God, but has just never had an personal experience with Him. There Spirit wasn't there at first because we were trying to get a feel for his background. However as we taught doctrine the room changed. The member we brought with us bore a powerful testimony! We taught about the role of prayer and committed him to say the closing prayer. I didn't know how it was going to go at all. What he said was beautiful and I could tell was heartfelt. The only thing is, and he knows this because he told us, is that he isn't looking for anything so it's going to be hard for him to change.

We went tracting in this apartment complex for over two hours afterwards. We found more potentials than I have ever found! Since coming here to West Lafayette I feel like people of another ethnicity are WAY kinder than Americans haha. Most of the people were at least open to talking to us for a few minutes. We have high hopes that we will get some new investigators from this potential pool.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling sick. I barely survived personal study and then went back to bed for an hour. At 10 the ZL's knocked on our door and asked us if we wanted to go practice church tours at the church with them. So we went. I have the weirdest ZL in the mission, but you can't help but love them. You just never know what is going to come out of there mouths. They told me to go back to bed too but we had an appointment to teach a member lesson afterwards. I came home and also slept during our lunch break and then we tried a potential. I knew I wasn't feeling good because I didn't have an appetite at all and the only thing that sounded good was saltine crackers and popsicles. Sister Hales told me that we just needed to go home. We ran to Walmart real quick and got the food and then I went home and laid in bed the rest of the day. I think that sometimes my body just doesn't get enough rest and just kind of has these freak out moments were it can't take it anymore. While I was in bed I was watching Mormon messages. One of them that I watched was about the man whose wife and two kids were killed in a car accident in 2007. Something he said really stood out. He said that I can't prevent Christ from working in the lives of people. Sometimes I know that I am being a hindrance to the Atonement from working whether it be in my own life or the life of another.  We have to be quick to forgive to allow the Atonement to permeate everyone.

Sunday the ward boundaries of Lafayette 1st and 2nd ward and the Logansport branch were realigned. President Ellis told us about two weeks ago and it was hard to keep it a secret the entire time. No one is leaving our ward but we are getting people from both units. Now I'm even more overwhelmed because we have even more people to learn. However, I really enjoyed the Easter program (next week is Stake conference). A couple members approached us in the hall and told us of people they are working with who they hope to introduce us to soon! I don't think that has ever happened before. Both Sister Hales and I were really excited.

Sunday afternoon was probably one of the hardest experiences I've had in awhile. We had planned to PC this park for an hour or so until our dinner appointment. We saw this guy sitting under a pavilion and we walked over and started talking to him. He immediately invited us to sit down and we began to talk about his experience with coming to know Christ. He shared with us that he was a student at Purdue and had even been to the YSA ward before. It made a quick turn for the worse. He began to tell us reasons why the Book of Mormon was false and kept showing us scriptures out of the Bible (he had been reading it when we walked up). A sick feeling overcome me and I immediately shut down. I didn't know what to do. Luckily, Sister Hales is a champ and just kept bearing her testimony. I still don't know how to get out of these types of situations. We probably ended up talking to him for about 40 minutes and when we finally walked away and I had absolutely no desire to talk to anyone else. As we were walking back to the car I told Sister Hales I just felt like crying, and that's what I did for probably the next hour. I've been told anti stuff before but it never hit me like it did yesterday. We shared with each other experiences of feeling the Spirit through tears. I didn't want to go to the member's house for dinner because I knew we would be teaching a short lessons afterwards and I felt like I just couldn't do it. I made it through the dinner appointment. Afterwards we came in to do studies. I still felt sick. I didn't want to read the Book of Mormon. I made the mistake of looking up scriptures in the Bible, searching for verses that proved that man wrong. When we were in the car earlier we texted the ZLs to see if they could give us blessings. They weren't available until that night. They came over and asked us what was going on and we explained the whole story. They are so sweet. They just told us there was no way the Book of Mormon couldn't be true. They blessing helped but everything wasn't magically gone. My favorite was as they were leaving one of the elders said "you know how I know blessings are real? Because I am terrible at giving advice." Sister Hales and I did our daily planning and the STLs came over and we chatted for a minute. They had gotten bashed that day too. Earlier at church I had had this thought that the reason I had come on a mission was to learn to rely on Christ. I recognized that this was another opportunity to experience the Atonement in a different way then I had ever experience before. This morning I still felt rotten, I had some pretty weird dreams last night that I won't go into detail about. I told Sister Hales this morning and she told me that Satan knows when we are at our weakest point and will work hard on us. I felt better when we went on a run after our studies, adrenaline helps with everything. Yesterday hurt, really bad. But with time I know I'll be able to overcome it. It's normal to question things. I kept thinking about Elder Holland's talk "Lord, I Believe" and Elder Uchtdorf's "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith". I'll be fine, really. It's just so important that my testimony is my own.