Monday, April 19, 2010

Ocala, FL Letter #9 April. 19, 2010

Hello Ya'll,
Well, me and my companion Elder Porter have been working are butts off this entire past week, we are totally focused on tracting and trying to find people to baptize. It has been a long, hard week. Things just have not been going our way. If we have nothing else to do (appointments, lessons, etc) we tract. So that being said we have been seeing lots of people and been teaching lots of new people but nothing has connected yet, However we will keep going strong, so it’s all good. We had zone conference this last week, which it was great! They kinda went back to the basics. They want us to focus on committing people better.

Oh, our recent convert Jack got his girlfriend to listen to the missionaries in Orlando and she was baptized this past Saturday! Moreover, get this; Jack was the one to baptize her since he now has the Aaronic priesthood!! It was way neat to get to see him do that, (since his girlfriend is going to be moving to Ocala anyway she got to be baptized up here). Yeah I am pretty proud of Jack!

I also got to take someone’s cigarettes this week, a woman named Cecilia, We tracted into her taught her the commandments and she was willing to give up smoking and everything to be baptized. She gave me her address because when I tracted into her she was at her friend’s house. So come to find out she is in 2nd ward, which means not my investigator I was kinda bummed about that. However, I got the opportunity to take Elder Brandon there (to her house) and teach her the first lesson! It was amazing how spiritual the lesson felt as we were teaching. We told her to give us her cigarettes and lighters and (with some coaxing) she did! It was wonderful to help her dump out her ashtrays and everything! We were so excited! Then the rest of the week the other missionaries took over and taught her a little bit more. She was still pretty solid till Sunday... she had a cigarette and didn't want to come to church after that; (which was way super sad to see that). Elders Brandon and Porter went to her house and tried to get her to not give up. However, “It was too late,” she said. Then she said that she “Was not strong enough and she dropped herself”. So in a very sad way I learned that it doesn’t matter how you start- you can be super pumped holding to the rod, (or as the Baptists say "On fire for Jesus!") but it matters how you finish that counts. However maybe one day she will see the missionaries again, but for now we just got to keep going and finding the elect who will listen to our message.

Oh and another thing we did this week (that was fun) was an outing we took as a district. Our entire district went to this “End of the world Sermon” (we actually got an invitation in the mail). Therefore, since we had been invited we decided to go and check it out. So last night there we were sitting there in full missionary armor (19-21 year olds) “presiding authorities” at this meeting! (Ha-ha!! It was so fun to think of it like that). They taught some truth but it was more along the lines of "philosophies of men" mingled with scripture...it was kinda different to see how others have been taught. It helped us to see why they think some of the things they do. Yes that was pretty much my week.

Tomorrow is my old companions’ birthday (Elder Rogers) I am going to try to give him a call and wish him the big 21st!! Lol he is such an old man now-ha-ha! Well I might have to go soon (they have a time limit here) and we have our p-day to enjoy! I am not sure what we have lined up. We might go to Firehouse Subs but really, I have no idea what we are doing for p-day. I really do have to sign off now, but I will actually talk to you guys soon!(Mother's Day) so that’s a plus!

Well you guys take care of each other and tell everyone that I love them!
Love you guys a lot!
From
The Elder with the growling stomach -Blair

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