Monday, October 13, 2014

Week 19 in the Field: Rough Times and Sweet Moments




Elder Nimmer, Elder Owens, and Elder Moeller emailing/Facebook

Hello everyone!

This week has been kind of rough.

On Monday we had FHE with the primary president and her family of seven kids with the oldest being 14-16 and the youngest being just 2. They have been working on memorizing The Living Christ (which is a testimony given by modern day prophets and apostles on Jesus Christ) due to one of the sisters who spoke at the General Women's Meeting (I think it was Sister Neill Marriott?). Anyway, they are a really sweet family.

On Tuesday, which was transfers for those who were getting transferred, Elder Moeller and I had to do double the work at the Bishop's Storehouse (which is basically where those who need food and supplies can receive some) due to so many missionaries going to transfers. We were physically drained. Later that night we had dinner with the Horlacher's who are a really nice family -- with one daughter married and two sons on missions. They met in the field when they both served in the Tampa Bay Mission, which then covered most of Florida. They had been fellowshipping one of our investigators named Dan for a while and warned us about him. We thanked them and told them that we were being cautious and not to worry.

On Wednesday we biked down to see Dan but he wasn't there. So we went tracting. We found the cutest elderly people of all time. Alice and Huey Barnes are over 80 years old and are Methodists. But they let us sit down on their back porch and we taught them about the restoration. When she spoke to us she would frequently use "Darlin'" and "Love" as well as "Sugar". They were so happy to see us and were happy to accept a Book of Mormon.

When we finally tracked Dan down later that day he threw a ton of anti-Mormon material at us, which wasn't too fun. He basically tried to disprove everything about the gospel, but he could not disprove the Book of Mormon, which was very interesting. We were able to help him see truth versus lies and myths and settled a lot of other affairs. We will see him again.

On Thursday we were going to go big with seeing people. We planned to see approximately 20 names on one of the two peninsulas. We ended up biking 16 miles trying to find everyone but taught only one lesson. We were really frustrated, but gratefully, the Mitchell's invited us back so we had a delicious fajita dinner.

On Friday we had yet another investigator chew us out and throw some anti-Mormon materials at our face. Hanz had a baptismal date for the longest time and then found some anti material involving the Book of Abraham. According to this "expert" the book and translation was completely false and that started Hanz's disbelief in the church as well as Joseph Smith.

He threw a ton of junk at us and criticized us for not letting non-members enter the temple. When we tried to explain answers to his questions, he would shift to another topic. After that we went over to a member who we actually found out converted from the religion Hanz currently attends. We had a great discussion with him and he helped us out. I'm going to miss making “Frozen” references, but I think it's a good thing we won't see him again.

The rest of the week went like this till Sunday. I was so frustrated by the lack of success and nothing happening. I prayed a ton and then finally felt that I needed to bear my testimony on Sunday. So I started bearing my testimony on the power of missionary work. As a result we have 4 splits with members this week, and the ward seems to be more missionary minded which is good. Conference also helped a ton.

It's been super hard but things are starting to look up. We are under tornado watch currently so that's exciting. I'll say hi to Scarecrow for ya!

I also encourage everyone to go see “Meet the Mormons.” It's a really fun and awesome movie that has a lot of great parts in it. We were able to screen it as a mission and we loved it. It's really touching and has something for everyone.

Hope you all are doing well,

Elder Peery

Sorry I don't have too many pictures this week. Haven't really had time.


1. The view from our apartment. We've biked up to the water tower several times. Lots of fun but there's a pretty steep hill both ways.



2. Gym in the Madison Stake Center. It's about twice the size of the Reston Ward building's gym.



No comments:

Post a Comment