Hey everyone!
This week has been an amazing week! Period! Haha
Last Monday night after emailing and doing
some tracting, we had a mission-wide conference call with President and Sister
Nilson all on faith, and how increased faith in the power of the Atonement will
bring forth results and blessing, for ourselves and those that we find. It gave
a really good start to the week, and Elder Cook and I really felt motivated to
have an amazing week! As well, Pres. Nilson felt inspired to have a
mission-wide fast forTuesday, which caught basically all of us off
guard, since Tuesday was also a
mission-wide bike day!
So starting Tuesday morning after studies,
Elder Cook and I got out on our bikes and started the hilly ride into town. The
Lindau's live out in the country/woods a was away from town, so it was a little
ways for us to even get to the place to start working! We first went to visit
the mother of a member who has liver cancer, but since she wasn't home we ended
up talking to her neighbors for a while, and they were really interested in
religion and learning more. We made a return appointment for tomorrow, and when Elder Cook
told them it was my birthday they got excited and said they'd make me some cake
for breakfast.. Great. haha. Later in the day we went to a members house for
dinner and got some pretty solid referrals from them, who we then contacted
immediately after and ended up teaching a family of 3 who are all really
interested and want to keep learning more! We've really been working hard on
getting solid member referrals, so this was a great testimony builder for me on
the importance of member referrals in missionary work!
Wednesday was district meeting,
but before that our district leader, Elder Benevidas from Mesa Arizona, did the
baptismal interview for our investigator David! As well, the Assistants showed
up for the district meeting, and it ended up being a really inspiring and
uplifting meeting for all of us. Afterwards, we went on exchanges, so Elder
Cook went to another area while Elder Benevidas stayed with me in Newark. We
worked super hard that day, but have very very limited success. It was one of
the hardest days of my misison so far, because of so much hard work and effort
pout forward with no thing to really show for it. But I know that there is no
amount of work that is wasted on a mission, since we don;t know what seeds we
are planting and we'll still receive blessings! I still learned some things I
can improve on from Elder B though, so it was all worth it!
One really strange things that happened though
is that we tracted into a guy wearing pants 5 sizes to small for him, and no
shirt, who asked us if we were "companions." As in asking if we were
gay. We answered in the negative and he says "Too bad, because I am."
we promptly recognized that we needed to get out of that situation, so we
encouraged him to go to mormon.org and then said have a
nice day! After going to the next door, this guy comes out again and shows us a
church he wants to go to, and then goes back inside. Another minute later, he
comes back out and says he's going to pray for us, then goes back in. Another
minute... he comes back out and tells us that he just prayed for us. Elder B
and I quickly ran to a nearby members house as soon as he went back inside this
time. We were obviously a little disturbed. Haha
Thursday we gave a chapel tour
to a girl who we'd be trying to meet for a while, with our ward mission leader
and the Lindau's daughter, who lives in the ward with her husband. The tour went
great, and we finished at the font in the building and invited her to be
baptized once she knew this church was true. She said "of course!"
But then promptly asked if we could walk outside so she could get some fresh
air... and then fainted right in front of the font. Luckily our Brother Stevens
caught her and laid her down so she didn't hurt herself. haha.
Turns out she has some health problems, so we
followed her home while Caitlin drove with her to make sure she didn't faint
again. It was something I'll definitely never forget. hahaha.
Saturday morning we had a
baptism for a 10 year old and her 8 year old sister, from a less active family
that has been coming back to church! Technically the 10 year old, Kiley, is a
convert baptism, so we and the senior couple here got to teach her and see her
baptised. IT was a very sweet experience, especially after they came back into
the room wearing matching pink dresses.!
Finally to end the week off with a
"splash", we had another baptism for our investigator David. David
asked me to baptism him, so I had the honor pf performing that ordinance! He's
a pretty big guy though, and since he knew he had to be completely submerged,
he basically threw himself backwards into the water and soaked me as well as
him. haha! But it really was an awesome experience. :)
I hope everything is still going great for you
all! Keep in touch!
Love,
Elder Aaron Toombs
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