First off, Happy Birthday Mom. I didn’t even realize we were
in November already. I still feel like it is August. Maybe cause that’s what
the weather is like and time is going by super fast. Also, Happy Birthday Tyler.
This week was really interesting and hard. Our zone did
really well last month with baptisms, but then after that we hit a complete
stop and only had 2 dates for baptism in all the zone, and very few progressing.
As a companionship we had very few investigators and of those, we had zero
progressing. Well we had a zone conference with president and he tried to help
us so we can improve the numbers.
Well me and Elder Rosales went and visited all our
investigators and whoever didn’t have a desire to find out if these things were
true, we dropped them. Well that was basically all but one of our
investigators. That meant we had to search for new people. The first day for the
search was interesting. We contacted a bit but were getting nothing. except a family
of a brother and sister who are progressing really well right now.
Well after that we decided to go try and find a person we
already contacted a couple days earlier and they told us to come back another day,
but they weren’t there all the times we went back to find them. So we decided
to try one last time. Well it was a pretty far walk, and on the way there it
started to rain out of nowhere. Well I didn’t have my umbrella because it hadn’t
rained for 2 weeks and there weren’t any clouds in the morning. Well we got
drenched. But the second we got outside the house of the people the husband saw
us because he was out on his "front porch" and basically sprinted to
open the front "gate". (Houses here are a lot different.) He almost
slipped and fell into barbed wire trying to save us from the rain (every house
is surround by barbed wired fences and gates and cactuses).
So we were in his front porch and he gave us some chairs,
and we started talking about him and then after a couple minutes of talking we
asked if we could share something, well turns out he and he wife hate organized
religion, the wife refused to come out and talk to us. But they hate religion
because they have actually read the bible and saw the apostasy that all the
churches were in. So we gave him the message of the restauration, and it seemed
like it was going really well, we gave him the Book of Mormon, and he said he
was going to read it, because he loves reading and learning more about God.
Well we were like hey great this is going really well until we had to leave and
he said don’t come back, if I find an answer I will come find you guys.
Well after that we contacted more but nothing really good
happened.
Well we went to go visit and inactive family, but they said
it would be better if we came back the next day. So we went across the street from
them were we thought someone else lived who is a friend of a member, but it was
just a really old lady. She let us in before we said anything. then her
grandson came in and he was 13. We gave the lesson of the restauration because
the grandson went to church but he didn’t believe any were completely right. He
even cried while we talked about the first vision. He accepted a date to be baptized.
Great isn’t it? Not. Two days later we
went back to teach him about the Book of Mormon, and he was outside with his
mom and grandma on his phone talking with them, we said hey how’s it going, he
said hi, and completely ignored us for 10 minutes while we stood in front of him
awkwardly trying to talk to him and the family. The whole family ignored us
haha.
Well the next day was even more interesting. I was praying
before we went out and I just felt like we were going to find four new investigators,
so I made a promise with God that we wouldn't stop contacting today until we
found them. I also started fasting. Well we started out contacting after lunch
and it was the same old story.
Most people aren’t interested, some say to come back another
day but surprisingly aren’t in their house when we return. The occasional old man
who starts yelling at us and tells us what we believe and how the Book of Mormon
is evil, and its talks about man, even though he’s never read it, and it goes
on for ten minutes and every time we try to say something he keeps talking
haha.
Well its about 6 and we see this house, and my comp is like
hey 4th floor last door right? referring to a talk of Uchtdorf from the women’s
session in conference about faith which is really good. Because the missionary’s
who found his wife knocked every door in the building and found her in the last
floor last door. Well there are two guys out side, and they tell us to come in.
they have met with missionaries beforehand. He talked a lot. But his only
problem with our church is that Joseph Smith saw God. In the Bible it says man can’t
see God.
So we just have to teach him about that and he will be good,
and there are like 5000 people who live in the house with them. But we left the
house. It was already passed the time we had planned to be contacting but we
still didn’t have 4 solid new investigators. So we keep knocking, by this time
it was really dark. Well we kept knocking and nothing. We see a women through
her window and say hi, she seems interested and that makes us really excited
and so we ask if we can share a message. She’s already a member but she’s just inactive,
so we tell her will come back and visit her. (She came to church this week
though)
Well finally my comp is like, alright come here, and we go
off the side of the path to a really dark area and say a prayer saying that we
really want to find these four people but we need help.. Well we finish the
prayer I look across the street and look at the house, and I’m like, lets
contact them. We knock on the door they come out and we are like hey, we are missionaries
and we would really love to share this message with you, I and bore my testimony
of how I knew it was true and the ladys like, come in. It was a family that had
four people in it. A grandma, her two grandsons and her daughter. The grandson
was about 25. And right now they are all questioning their religion right now.
It shows that we have to do everything we can and the lord
will bless us after the trial of our faith. We still have a lot of work to do with
them, but I know for a fact that they were prepared by God.
Sorry for the long email haha. I also have a bunch of
pictures, but I might not be able to send them all because right now I’m at a
computer that’s really slow. Next week I will be writing in the stake center where
the computers are super fast.
Love Elder Blanchard
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