Mama Rika Update Pictures and Elevator Teaching

The fancy board game Princess made for our Family Home Evening on tithing.  Most of us submitted questions that we had to answer if we landed on a “?” spot. 

When the rain came, Princess took her little brothers out to ride in the rain.  (She didn't want in the picture for some reason.)  Even though it looks sunny, it is actually raining!

Missionary Update:

Week two in Fairmont!

Monday:

Did laundry at the laundromat. Thankfully it's owned by the bishop and he lets us use it for free. Spent a little time writing letters while I was waiting for my stuff to dry. It was nice to finally be able to sit down and relax.

Later in the day, We were able to teach J. Originally we planned to teach his Roommate, A, but A wasn't home. So instead J invited us in and we taught him. It was a really good lesson, we invited him to be baptized, and I hope that his prayers will give him the assurance he needs to make that next step.

Tuesday:

We helped move a member in the morning. I have never seen so many baseball cards in my life. He said he had about 150,000 or so. It was literally boxes piled up to the ceiling of just baseball cards. It was ridiculous! He showed us some pretty cool ones though, Mickey Mantle Rookie card, for example. Thankfully all of the things that we moved were just boxes, probably the hardest part of the whole move was getting to his new place. It was in town, but the roads were extremely small and on a hillside that made it very difficult to drive to. These West-Virginian hills can make things difficult.

Later that evening we had dinner and a lesson with a less active member.

Wednesday:

We had a pretty good day overall. We taught a lesson in the morning to an older lady that has been investigating the church for forever. She already believes the Book of Mormon to be true, she's just having trouble switching over from her old church to this new one. And that has kept her out of baptism for several years. We taught her a lesson, and then we invited her to be baptized. She said she needed to, but we couldn't pin her down to any specific time table. I guess we'll just have to love her into it. It seems to be the only way to get them there.

We had dinner with a member at a restaurant. I was foolish enough to order the chimi changa platter. I should have realized that I've been spoiled for the past 20 years of my life, and known that the Mexican food out here wouldn't be up to par to Arizonan and Southern California standards. Oh well, I'll just have to get some chicken and dumpling, or some biscuits  and gravy next time. I know they'll do a good job with that.

Thursday:

Taught a less active member. He had gone really in depth on the reading assignment we gave him last week. Probably way more in depth than I have ever gone on it. I was impressed and excited because of it.

We also had dinner with our new ward mission leader. He'll be a big spark to missionary work out here. We're excited to work with him.

Friday:

We had our first district meeting of the transfer. It was up in Morgantown. It was a good meeting. We had a cool object lesson. The object was to cross the "river of lava" (the carpet) using "stepping stones" (pieces of paper). The district members were divided up into two teams. One team of 3 and one team of 2. ( I didn't participate since I already knew the "trick" to the game.) Each team tried to get across the river of lava using only one stepping stone per person. They found out pretty quickly that it would take several more stepping stones to reach the other side. Undeterred, each team came up with new strategies that would enable them to cross the river using the resources they had. It was quite amusing to watch a bunch of 20 year old men in white shirts and ties carrying each other and maneuvering around, and  frog jumping over each other to get to the next stepping stone.

Finally after all was done, and a team had crossed, I showed them a much simpler way to do it. I simply took everyone's stepping stones, and I lined them all across the river of lava. Shockingly, (not so much to me) all of the stones together created a perfect bridge to the other side. Then we had a lesson on unity and working together. If they would've worked together and pooled their resources, they would've easily been able to cross the river in seconds rather than in the 10 or so minutes it actually took. It was a lot of fun, and I think I helped get the point across for unity.

Saturday:

Taught a short lesson to some investigators in the morning. We tracted most of the day with very little success. E. Boughan attributes it to the WVU game. He may be right. The city likes to shut down right about game time.

 We had dinner with a member, and then did some more finding activities. Unfortunately, when it started getting really dark, to avoid running into an excessive amount of drunk people, we went back to the apartment and categorized our ward roster by area.

Sunday:

First day at a church since last week was general conference. It was good to meet the ward members. A lot of the day was pretty slow, but we had a couple "ray of sunlight" moments that kept us going.

First: We were looking for a less active member, and after a long search, we found the address. Well the less active member didn't live there any more, just this really crazy guy instead. He kept going off about his neighbor and how much he doesn't like her. He ranted for a good 30 min, and I won't even try to explain everything he said, but somehow he jumped around from God helping him in his surgery to How he wouldn't raise hand against his neighbor because of The Ten Commandments movie. While we was going off about his neighbor, guess who showed up? You guessed it, his neighbor. Thankfully he shrunk back into his apartment, and we were able to get away.

We started talking to his neighbor, we told her what we did as missionaries, and we asked if she would like us to come over and help her learn more. She told us that would be great, and that she had been really down in the dumps all day, and this was just what she needed in her day.

As we started to say goodbye, the crazy guy came out with a large, blunt, scary-looking stick. He then said, "Confucius says,'he who laughs last laughs longest'" Then promptly, the guy walked down his porch and out to his car and drove away. All three of us (Me, E. Boughan, and the Neighbor) stood kind of stunned for a moment, then burst out in laughter at how ridiculous the past 30 minutes had just been.

Second: A week or so ago, we went to go visit a less active member named M. He lives in some apartments we where we are not allowed to proselyte in. However, right before we entered, I saw a lady outside on the bench. We started a conversation with her and somewhat reluctantly, she accepted a Book of Mormon. Well, went to got visit M again, we had a great meeting with him, and it was a great way to end the night. When we got into the elevator to leave, we were surprised to see the same lady from the week earlier. It didn't really look like she wanted to talk to us, but she surprised us when she said, "I started reading that book you gave me, but it was a little confusing. I didn't understand the footnotes." We then opened up a copy of the Book of Mormon, explained the footnotes to her, and challenged her to look up some of the references to the Bible found there.  "You believe in the Bible?" She responded. We laughed and informed her it was definitely the word of God. Her stop came, and both she and we left the elevator smiling.

That's all for this week!

Love ya!

Elder Connole