Hi mom,
This was a really good week for us.
Monday was normal, we had some lessons set up, but they didn't happen. We did eat a cena with a Recent Convert, less-active member, but that's about it.
Tuesday we had district meeting and a few lessons planed. Nothing came of it, but we did find a family. We taught them the restoration and set up a return appointment for the next day so we could teach everyone. They have 3 kids and the oldest is 8, so we taught the dad and the 8 year old and hoped to teach the mom with them on Wednesday.
On Wednesday we had an exchange with Elder McKinney and Elder Florez. I went stayed Elder Florez here and Elder Weinheimer left with Elder McKinney. We talked to everyone that passed by us, but no one wanted to learn. We did, however find a man who wants to learn, but he can't meet until the 20th of August, so we'll see how solid he is. Elder Flores invited everyone to church as well, so we had a lot of calls to make on Saturday night. We also went back to teach that family we found on Tuesday. The dad wasn't there, but the mom was... and wasn't interested, we also learned that they aren't married. The 8 year old kid came to the door while we were there and said that he still wanted to learn, so we got his mom's permission and then sat down on the steps and taught him the restoration over again. We did that partially because Elder Flores didn't know that we'd already taught him that and partially because he understands better in English and we'd taught him in Spanish. We then ran to coordination and ended the day.
Thursday was fun. We had service in the morning and then we were going to do lunch and Weekly Planning, but I started updating the area book (something we should have been doing the whole time, but hadn't) and so we took two hours to do that and then had to leave to go to work. We didn't find any miracles that day (or at least none I can remember,) but we talked to everyone.
Friday was a fun day. We still needed to do weekly planning, so we took the morning to do that. We then went out to work and ran by some potentials in the area. One lives in J* (the 8 year old)'s apartment. She wasn't there, but J* walked by while we were there and said, "See you on Monday" (our return appointment). SO SOLIDDDDDDDDD! We then went and knocked an apartment building we'd walked passed many times, but didn't know was an apartment complex until we knocked a different building in the area this week. It's really cool to see how the Lord works, because we didn't see a lot of success in the first complex (only a potential and a new family (J*'s)). But, from this, we found a new building and two more investigators.
We then went and walked WAY down our area. We've knocked all of the complexes we can get into in the near proximity to our apartment (because we've been walking all the time) and found this other really small apartment complex, and I mean small. The complex was pretty small, and the apartments were tinny. They're called studios and it's like living in a room about the size of a recoding studio. We started knocking and ran into J* R*. She's a 20-year-old foster child who's taking care of her 21-year-old friends. We taught her the restoration and then tried to get a return appointment, but she's planning on moving soon, so we said we can come back and help out with the move. She will be a really good referral for English.
We then continued knocking the complex, but we were running short on time. We had dinner up by our apartment in almost twenty minutes, so we decided we'd finish the complex and then head to dinner. We hadn't knocked more then two doors after Sister Rose when the door opened and we were invited in to teach the Familia T* (I think that's how it's spelled, I'll have to check and get back to you). It was such a good lesson. At the end, Hermano T* said the prayer and it was so powerful. They told us after the prayer that at first they didn't want to open the door, but M* said, "We should at least hear what they have to say," so we picked up three more really solid investigators. It's a family of five but only three are over eight. We also found a familia that we are going to teach in our actual mission language, Spanglish. They were comfortable in English, but for church things they were more comfortable in Spanish, so every other sentence was English and the rest was Spanish. We'd actually started in English and then ended in Spanish. Is was so much fun. We then ran to cena and finished the day.
Saturday was cool. We ran by potentials and investigators all day. We finally found one of our potentials who has a lot of interest, but we couldn't teach her right there because she was getting ready to run. We did meet her friend. She lives in Van Nuys and has listened to missionaries before. Not just missionaries, but ones I know! She was listening to missionaries when I started my mission and I knew the missionaries who taught her as they were teaching her. It was kind of cool. Other then that, not much happened. We made the calls and ran by an investigator whose mom started listening, but I don't think that she had much potential. As it is the investigator has no drive, he just sits around all day playing video games, but we'll keep going by until we find out they don't want it
Sunday we had church and then a day full of lessons, that didn't happen. We had back ups to them and so we ran by the back ups, and they also didn't happen. We did manage to teach one man, he's pretty cool, but likes to talk, so we'll have to find a way to control the lessons. We also ran by an investigator we've been trying to get in touch with for a while. We finally got to talk to her again and she said that her dad doesn't want her taking the lessons any more. She turns 18 in October, so hopefully we'll be in teaching her again soon.
That's about it for the week. Let me know if you want more details.
Ops, nearly forgot to
RETURN AND REPORT
Weight loss: 185 libs. Mi pansita (my belly) is almost gone
Con amor
Elder Michael Robert Blanding
Called to Serve My King