Elder Rushton and Elder Wood Golfing

This week was a pretty standard week for us. We were able to get 2 new investigators which was really awesome because we haven’t had a new investigator for about 4 weeks. They’re both pretty solid investigators too so hopefully they progress well in the Gospel. We didn’t have to do to much tracting this week either and I am A-OK with that. I don’t really mind tracting, but there are days in Romeo where we end up tracting for 5-6 hours. And that can go on for days.

On Wednesday we went to a Bible study at someones house. About 2 weeks ago we were out tracting and we ran into a retired pastor for a non-denominational christian church and he invited us right in. He told us that missionaries have come to his Bible study before and that we were invited so we decided to go. There were about 5 people there besides us and they were all really nice. At the end of the study, he gave us some time so share our message and then let everyone ask us questions. Some people brought up some anti-mormon material that they had heard but it was cool because they really wanted to know if it was true or not. Nobody there was trying to attack our religion which was really nice. We talked to them for about a half hour and then afterwards 2 of the people there had more questions for us. We’re going back again this Wednesday.

This weekend was a little more busy than normal. Normally on Saturday’s we spend almost the whole day tracting but last Saturday we had a bunch of appointments which was really nice. We also went over and did more service for Bro. Jenson and his non-member friend he’s living with. They’re building this gigantic, 2 story warehouse and we’ve been going over and helping them every other week.  It’s fun service because Bro. Jenson is awesome and I’m learning a ton about construction work. On Sunday we had a combined branch/ward conference with the Lake Orion ward. We had to drive to a different building about a half hour away so that pretty much killed our hopes of having investigators at church. We were still able to have 1 investigator come though which was nice.

Other than that everything has been pretty much same old same old. Almost all of our investigators are progressing really well. We are hopefully going to have a 3 baptisms on March 17 so cross your fingers because it would be awesome and just what this branch needs. We also have 2 non-members in our area that are planning on going to the Gladys Knight fireside so hopefully they get touched by the Spirit. Hope everyone is doing well. -Erik

Erik Buys A Slurpee in Michigan

So I’m staying in Romeo another transfer. I was pretty surprised that Elder Alger is being transferred. But the Lord works in mysterious ways so I’ll guess we’ll see what happens. The hard part is going to be finding streets to tract that I haven’t done yet! Romeo is a pretty big area but the church doesn’t really give us enough car miles to get out of the main part of town very often. So I’ve pretty much tracted all the streets within a 5 mile radius of our apartment. Plus, as you move farther out of town, it’s not uncommon to find streets that only have 2 or 3 houses on them.

The highlight of this week had to be the lesson we had on Tuesday with our investigators. Their mom has been giving them a lot of anti-mormon literature and they aren’t even phased by it. They wrote down her questions so that they could ask us and then they wrote down our answers so they could combat her haha. We showed them the Restoration movie and they said they were going to trick their mom into watching it to see what she thinks about it. They’re on baptism date for the end of February but they need to come to church a few times before they can be baptized.

Also on Tuesday we had New Missionary Orientation. It was a good meeting but it was about an hour and a half long drive which sucked. It pretty much killed our whole day so we only got one lesson that day. We had a meeting every single day this week which made our lessons ended up coming out a little low.

On Thursday we drove out to Waterford to help a couple Elders move into a new apartment. It was pretty fun because our whole district was together and then we went to Subway for lunch. It took us most of the day but it was a good break from normal missionary work. We’re going out golfing again (hitting golf balls) with the district today so that should be fun. Two other Elders besides Elder Alger are leaving the District. It’s going to be weird because after they all leave, I’ll be the missionary who’s been in the district the longest.

We thought we were going to be able to hit all of our goals this week because the week started off so well– Even with New Missionary Orientation and moving Elders stealing a lot of our proselyting time we were still doing well. But then Friday came and suddenly nobody could meet with us. That’s not unusual for Romeo though. We usually spend most of the weekend tracting and luckily we were still able to get a couple new potential investigators.

On Saturday we had correlation meeting with our Branch Mission Leader Bro. Robertson and he made us an awesome breakfast. I always look forward to correlation meeting on Saturday because he always makes us breakfast. One time, Sis. Robertson’s mom was in town and she is from Georgia so she made us true, southern style biscuits and gravy. It was amazing! After correlation we spent all day tracting because our appointments fell through. That usually happens every Saturday. But Saturday is a good day to tract so that’s ok.

We had two investigators come to church on sunday which was pretty sweet. I love it when investigators come to church because it shows me that they really are interested in the Gospel and the Spirit is really working with them. I am always nervous to have investigators come to testimony meeting though because you never know what people are going to talk about. I always hope nobody brings up anything too crazy and without fail there’s always things brought up that we haven’t taught our investigators about yet. One Sister got up and bore a great testimony for our investigators to hear though. It was right after someone got up and bore a testimony about the temple and he brought up some deep doctrine stuff.  I could tell our investigators were a little confused. But the Sister that spoke is a convert too and she bore a good testimony about how understanding comes in time and it took her forever to understand some things about the gospel.

Well, my time is about up. I hope everyone is doing well! Have an awesome week!

-Erik