5/26/14 - Jordon

 

Well, this week has been fairly interesting, and I've realized a lot, too.

Do you remember Bailey, the one having parental issues? Well, her 18th birthday was this past Saturday, so she now no longer "needs" parental consent to be baptized. However, she has now decided that she is going to wait for a bit to be baptized, so she can have the support of her father. Family status: Parents are divorced. Mother: Less-active member. Father: Less-active member who asked for his records to be removed from the church, and is now a tad anti-LDS. Grandmother: Active member. We recently found out that, apparently, her mother is actually quite supportive of her being baptized. She knows that if Bailey joins the Church, she'll have good moral values and will instantly make friends with similar values (other members of the Church) wherever she goes. And, what mother wouldn't want that for her child. I think she was even saying that she would come to church with Bailey after her baptism. That's excellent. The trick right now is the father--He's not too comfortable with this. As I understand it, he currently is living with Grandma (active) who lives nearby. Also, in June, more family (also active members) are coming for a visit. Surely there will be a family gathering discussing this issue. We're hoping for the best. More to come.

On Friday we found a new investigator! (YAY!) Or, to be fair, a former investigator who hasn't met with the missionaries for a long while. (but it still counts! ) His name is Steve, and we were introduced to him through his member neighbor. And, well.....we're not certain what to make of him. He's really nice and respectful. He loves meeting with the missionaries, and he has lots of questions. However, a lot of his focus seems to be on topics considered "deep doctrine". We're making plans to adjust that focus toward the missionary lessons. We'll see how it goes in our next meeting with him (Wednesday). We'll find out soon.

I had an interesting realization, a bit ago. The missionary mantle carries with it many blessings. The blessing I realized this time was that your mind is somewhat quickened as missionary. In that, I'm referring to remembering names and faces. Back home, I was horrible with remembering people's names whom I had just met. Well, recently,we had dinner with one of the families in one of our wards. This family has seven kids. In addition to us, they also decided to invite the neighbor family over to join us. Well, that family has five kids. And just because, one of the girls from another neighbor family decided to join us, as well. (Don't freak out, all of them were members.) So, to total everything up, there were 13 kids. Well, by the end of dinner I was able to learn everyone's name and then repeat them all back (pointing and naming) at the end with maybe one or two mistakes. (For me, that's a fairly big feat.) Playing the name game with larger families is fun for me. It really helps me learn the names of the members of the ward. I think it also helps with member trust, too, because it shows them that your putting forth effort to get to know them. It's fun being a missionary.

Also, I realized that I made a mistake when I was younger. I should have continued with Karate until I got to black belt, at least. It might have been a good achievement to have for the future (job interviews/resumes?), but at the time we were getting lessons for free while Mom was one of the instructors for the kids. Now I kinda wish I could go back to karate to get the black belt, but unfortunately, that will cost money for lessons now. Oh, well.

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Ok, one more thing. Just about every morning, one of the Elders I live with makes bacon and eggs for breakfast. Well, this causes the room to get a bit smokey (as cooking with grease tends to do). Well, one morning I got an idea. There's a window in just the right spot that the sun shines through and illuminates the smoke. I took a picture and added a caption. Scroll down.

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Revelation

You can receive it, too.

Hehe. Well, that's it for today. Until next week.

Con amor,

-Elder Jordon Hill-