Hello Family/Friends, Merry Freaking Natal!
Let me first just tell you a little about my week. I can sum it up with this... Marriage was SO much less complicated back in the states... Yikes. I literally spent my week trying to keep EVERTHING from falling apart instead of just most of it. Okay thats pessimistic but we recieved a lot of bad news. To give you an idea, This week we told an ex communicated ex bishop that he was BREAKING the law of chastity and to stop justifying it. Then we got a frantic call from one of our craziest investigators that her to be husband spent the marriage money that we gave him on a girl (again), But the highlight was definatly getting the call that Gilmar was arrested in front of his kids for crack, I serioulsy cried.
The situation turned the next day, when his wife foolishly let him back into the house. Needless to say that was an awkward visit. Neither my comp or i wanted to say anything, so finally i just started talking. To this minute i have no idea what i said or how i said it, but I found myself standing up after listening to him scream at his wife and saying NO, this is YOUR fault. You are going to lose your family and everything you have if you cant stop, and if you do it again, im going to make sure that you never step foot inside this house again. Yeah.. it was a little strong. I was shaking. The minute we left my comp was just like i CANT BELIVE YOU SAID THAT!! But somehow we (19 year old nobody americans) can talk to people like that (Even ex bishops) and people respect what we have to say. It was a long visit and i couldnt tell all if i tried but it was powerful. I pray it has an influence. I love those kids too much for it not to.
The day before that was a pretty interesting day as well. One of those classic missionary days where you are kicked down, shot in the kneecap, twice, then spit on, and kicked once more. Seriously every single thing we had fell, and they were important visits. It was about 745, we hadnt eaten dinner, and were seriously mentally and physically exhausted. We really thought about grabbing a pizza, taking our dinner hour and ending a little early. But we made a better decision, and trusted that if we knocked doors in the heat of the night, he would bless us. He did, the second door we knocked a very evangelical lady named sonya answered and invited us in. We began to teach her the restoration, but switched quickly to the plan of salvation after hearing that her mom just died. I have high hopes for her. Perserverance and faith always pays off.
-Little side note we decided to celbrate our persistance with some pastels that we buy at a bar. And while we were waiting i saw a little man drinking his life away and crying. I contacted him, and he said he used to take the missionaries. But couldnt kick COKE. Some missionaries are so freaking retarted. We´ll visit him thursday.
It was a hard week. And a really long one. Cant lie it felt like a month.. But the work will never stop right? We shed a lot of blood.. Moroni didnt like to shed blood on the battlefield, but did so when he needed to in order for the salvation of his people. I hated every minute of it, but it was necessary. I hope all of you have an EXCELLENT natal, i will miss it. Please give my Thanks to Jacobsons and Paulsons for sending me christmas cards, that was really nice of them. Love.
And yeah we have pictures of bowling!! I went bowling! No, its not the same, but still fun!
THE FOLLOWING IS FROM ELDER LYNN'S PERSPECTIVE:
Hey Fam
FELIZ NATAL!!!!
There was some pretty crazy happenings this week if I do say so myself.
We had a crazy move to do in the ward. A member was moving to a spot kind of by our house and of course she asked the Elders to help her out. We accepted and when we got to the apartment we found out that the move was from the 4th floor and not only that, they had half floors so it felt like 8! We moved wardrobes, a refridgerator, a oven, tables, and other crazy items. Not to mention it was about 95° outside ugh.
Then we had a cool National Geographic moment when we saw a orange wasp attack a big spider as the spider was fleeing. Then the wasp managed to paralyze the big guy and drag it to a hiding place in order to lay its eggs inside the corpse and have the little wasps have food when they hatch. The worst thing is that the spider is alive during most of it.
Also Elder Allred and I had to "shed some blood" on Sunday because of the choices of some of our big investigators. The term "shedding blood" comes from a conversation that Elder Allred and I had about how Captain Moroni didn't like shedding blood but did it because it was necessary. So we related this to the fact that we don't like chastising our investigators but when it is necessary we do it for their benefit. Hence "Shedding Blood"
So we found out that one of our investigators (Tall, Heavily Built) Fell back into his addiction to some heavy substance and but wouldn't accept responsibility for his actions that were destroying his family (literally) So We planned to have Elder Allred start. He started slow, not sure what direction to run, and looked at me. I then said that we would like a few questions and looked back to Elder Allred. That is when he grabbed that ball and ran for the touchdown. He told this heavier built man that it was his fault that his family was falling apart that he was the one guilty and to stop trying to blame others. I was shocked, one second he was fumbling and the next he smacked through the D-Line and took down the biggest guy in the field. This rocked our investigators world a little bit and as we told him that there were two options; keep the family or keep the drugs. Wow when Heavenly Father is on your side, why fear the arm of flesh. Elder Allred was awesome and taught me a thing or two about not fearing.
We're going to play a little ball right now.
Merry Christmas/Feliz Natal
Love you all,
Elder Lynn
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