July 27, 2009

Ya the priest was cool, he basically became a missionary
for the week. He lived with us and did everything we did.
He didn't teach as much, but he did give some good input,
it was fun having a second companion for a while.

This week was long. We got about 10 dogged (means people
aren't there for their appointments) appointments and lost
an investigator. She was actually a very promising one too,
everytime she'd talk about how she felt something was
missing from her church it would be exactly what we were
about to see. For example, paid ministers; she thought they
ought to be volunteers. We had an awesome first lesson,
the spirit was so strong. She even said she had to pray
about it to see if it was true first, before we even asked
her to. Then randomly yesterday she sends her son out to
tell us shes 'going to stick with the baptist church.'
We think it is probably outside pressure (family, anti-church
stuff, church, etc.) The moral of the story is, things
happen in the Lord's time, not ours. She'll be baptized
some day, if not in this life, then in the next. So basically,
this is what is called a 'trial week.' Which means blessing
week is next :) There's always a rainbow after the storm.

As for the rest of the investigators, things are going good
for the most part. People are really hard to get a hold of
here because most of them work 2 jobs and are rarely home.
One of them is going really good, though. His name is George.
Hes married to a member who converted 17 years ago, but he
never did. Shes been trying to get him to be baptized, but
he never has. George is super suportive of her choice in
religion and even took his son to the MTC when he was going
on his mission. He lets the missionaries come over for
dinner all the time, but one time (maybe 5 years ago) when
he had some Elders over they were talking about President
Hinckley. George loves Pres. Hinckley and was telling the
missionaries that if he were told by the prophet to move
he would. Apparently the Elders then were a little
rambuncious and said 'well Pres. Hinckley doesn't want
you to move, but he does want you to get baptized.' He
kind of gasped at this becuase it was too straightforward
and he never listened to the missionaries again....until
now. When me and Elder Stribling went to their house for
dinner a couple weeks ago we got along smashingly. We
started talking religion and by the end of dinner George
said he would start reading the Book of Mormon with his
wife. Ever since then they read a chapter in the morning,
then discuss it for about 30 min. Recently, hes even been
having us over to answer his questions. We have a 2 hour
lesson with him tonight! His wife says we were sent here
specifically for them because its the first time hes made
any real progress in 17 years. Even when he cut himself
so bad he had to go get stitches, he still came back and
had a lesson with us. We're hoping for the best. Wow that
was long.

So pretty much we're having some highs, some lows, so is
the life of a missionary. O, something exciting happened
with one of our baptismal dates. So Tina (the BD) has an
evil ex-husband who has some of her stuff (desks, mirrors,
etc.) refuses to help her in any way. She decided to go
over there and get her stuff with us and long story short
3 cop cars arrived and we had an interesting experience.
It all turned out alright-ish because now Tinas is going
over again (with her own police escort) to get her stuff.
Something funny that happened-we say a hilarious guy
'speed walking.' You had to be there.  
Have fun in Hawaii, don't get sunburned.

Love you, Elder Julian