March 15, 2011

This week has been a great one. Funny story from last Tuesday. I was in Hastings with a few other missionaries. I got Branden Heath's new CD. Anyone looking for a cd to get it's a good one. Anyway, while in there a guy came up to me and started talking to me. I'm going to do my best to get the conversation word for word.

"Where are you from?"
"Texas"
"Is today your P-Day?" (we get that a lot because our p-day is on Tuesday instead of Mon)"
"Are you allowed to go into places like this on your p-day?"
"We are"
"Oh, just curious, because in MY mission, we weren't allowed to go into places like this, but then again you were called to Utah. It must be sad to not of been called to a real mission"

And walked away. It was pretty epic. Moral of the story is, make sure you don't become this guy. Don't make assumptions based on judgment and long past "knowledge" I don't care about what this guy said, but those same people are an investigator or less-active member's worst nightmare.

In other news, Elder Daly and I have seen how talking to everyone works. An unplanned contact is when you talk to someone who you hadn't planned on talking to. So it's different than tracting. We have a goal as a mission to get 10 unplanned contacts a day, which depending on the day, can be hard or easy. This last Saturday, Elder Daly and I had a goal of 75 unplanned contacts.

With help of a sunny warm day, we got 79. It was sweet to be able to talk to everyone like that. Saturday evening we got lost and, as we realized we had no idea where we were, asked ourselves, why are we here. We looked around and found our reason. A woman was sitting at her doorstep by herself. We went over and got to know her. As we talked, we found she was a member who hadn't gone to church in a long time. She was working on quitting smoking so she could go through the temple for the first time in a year. We talked for a bit and by the end of the conversation, were able to take her new, full cigarette pack, and tear it up and throw it away. Because we got lost, and committed to talk to everyone we saw, we were able to take some small part in helping her along the way.

Sometimes God sends us little promptings about something we should do, or who we need to teach as missionaries. Sometimes he is a little more vocal about what we need to do. This week we got a slap in the face from the spirit. Last Wednesday, we talked to a kid our age. His name was Shawn. He was a member, but told us he had a non-member roommate named Moe. He told us he'd invite Moe to church and to meet with us. We get people to commit to do that a lot, but it very rarely ends up happening. We finished our conversation with Shawn and kept walking. Not 5 minutes later we ran into another kid our age. His name was Moe. We knew it was Shawn's friend, so instead of trying to meet with him, we just offered any help and talked for a bit, hoping Shawn would invite him.

It means a lot more coming from a friend than two kids in suits. A few days later, Saturday, we ran into Moe again! He was sitting in a park by himself. We usually wouldn't have walked all the way over to him, but luckily it was our 75 Saturday. We talked to him a bit more. He grew up in LA. And was planning on going to Pepperdine for school. But he got into some trouble, and decided to come to Logan, and try to work his way into USU. We told him it wasn't coincidence us running into each other again, he agreed and said he was thinking about going to the singles ward with his friend that Sunday. We had a good chat with him, and then parted ways, still hoping Shawn would now invite him to meet with us.

Later Saturday we walked down a street we hadn't been on before (we're both still relatively new to the area). We knocked on a random house, and eventually found out it was the family that Shawn and Moe are living with. They weren't there, but if that wasn't the 4th prompting that we need to teach this kid, I don't know what is. We're going to call Shawn tomorrow to see if he's talked to him yet. I'm pumped.