As you can tell from the subject line, this was a pretty interesting week. So, we had dinner on Tuesday with a guy in the ward that just moved in a few weeks ago and his wife who is not a member. Me and Elder V had already met them before but somehow forgot to let us in on a little gem of his. We got talking and found out that he is C3PO!!! He works for Lucas Films as a side job and does the acting anytime they need someone in a C3PO suit. He has been doing it since 2006, so he wasn't in the old movies, but every picture of C3PO since then is him! It's crazy! He has been on hundreds of ads, commercials, pictures, appearances, you name it. He is good friends with George Lucas, has pictures with Barrack Obama, Johnny Depp, the original C3PO, etc. He even has the official C3PO suit in his garage, but we didn't have time to go down and look at it. Also, he is the coolest guy ever. He is divorced and re-married, and his wife isn't a member. He grew up Baptist and we brought him to a lesson with Josh already because of it. He rides a custom old-fashioned motorcycle and he is super hipster. He also bore a super powerful testimony in sacrament meeting about his conversion and the hope that is in Christ. It was sweet! And he is really nice and friendly and introduces himself to everyone and all those we bring to church. He is the best!
Anyways, to the rest of the week. Monday was a solid day. for P-Day we went to a park and had a big soccer game. It was super fun to play soccer again and I scored one of our four goals. It is nice to play sports every now and then.We had a family home evening with the S's at Sister S's parent's house in the W R ward, but since A lives there and we want to help the mom be more active and get the dad interested, we did the lesson at their house. Sister S translated our lesson into Spanish for the dad since he speaks little English. It was a great lesson, but Sister S told us that it would work better for her family to have the baptism this on Saturday. If you remember, A is Sister S's younger sister, they decided that we would get to teach her since she was going to come to our ward, but they still wanted to get her family as involved as much as possible so we have done everything with that focus, so we moved the baptism to Saturday (yes two days ago). This meant that we had to meet with her a few more times that week to teach the rest of what she needed to learn and to go over the interview questions and schedule the building, invite everyone, make a program, and all that jazz.
Tuesday we had a lesson with a lady we met named M. She is like 30 and wanted us to come back and teach her, so we had a first lesson and talked about how we can see Christ more clearly in our lives. Elder T has a cool picture of Christ with three pieces of film paper over it so as we talk about three specific things (Church, prayer, and reading the Book of Mormon) we remove them until they can see Christ clearly (I wouldn't mind having one of my own). She told us that she has struggled with her faith recently after a death in the family and that is why she let us back because we had talked about Christ. It was cool to be the answer to a prayer. She said she would read the Book of Mormon, but her husband doesn't really want her to change churches so we weren't able to meet with her again yet and she couldn't come to church but she seemed interested. We had our Bible Study but it is still a small turnout. We had a lesson with J and A and it went well. We watched Elder Holland's testimony of the Book of Mormon which was powerful and then we bore our testimonies about the Book of Mormon. We asked him if he had any questions about the Book of Mormon and he finally started to ask us some questions he has had but they are pretty small things, like how did the prophets in the Book of Mormon know Christ's specific name in the people in the Old Testament didn't, but I found in 2 Nephi 10 that an angel revealed it to Jacob while he was praying. Other small things like that. So we told him you have to step back and look at the big picture. I felt inspired to tell J that we all still have questions in the church and that our lesson next time we can all bring a question we have had and throughout the week find scriptures to answer our questions. This helped him a lot because he feels like he is the only one with questions so he really liked the fact that we as missionaries still have questions but we need to act in faith. Hopefully it will also help him learn how to answer his questions on his own. We can also use our "question" and answer to teach him something we feel like he still needs, so this next lesson should be cool. He is a great guy. We invited him to the baptism but he didn't come since he had his son this week.
Wednesday we had district meeting and our whole day was scheduled with lessons but every single one fell through except our lesson with the Ms. It went pretty well and Brother M told us his conversion story and told us that he is trying to make it back but it is tough to get back in the swing of things. Hopefully he remembers the good feelings he had when he was baptized and has the desire to share it with his wife who isn't a member. Wednesday it was absolutely pouring rain. It was crazy hard that night and it was SO SWEET! I love the rain here in Texas. It is beautiful. We went out on our porch and watched the lightning and listened to the thunder for awhile. Elder T was a photographer so we took some cool pictures on his camera. I will see if he can email me some of them.
Thursday morning we went and did service at the Round Rock Service Center. We pretty much packed food into bags for people who came and picked up the bags of food. It was a good experience and some hard work surprisingly. I was walking past the line of people to check something and I saw a guy with a "Trust Jesus" shirt on so I told him it was a sweet shirt, but then he was mad at me and yelled that "we don't have the same Jesus." I just didn't say anything and kept walking. I have no idea what he was talking about and it was sad to see We taught M and it went well. She had read from the Book of Mormon and she liked it fine so far. She actually let us get all the way through the Plan of Salvation because we let her know before the lesson that she wouldn't agree with everything and have questions, but if she listened with an open heart that she could know that what we teach is true. To me, I don't know how the Plan of Salvation doesn't just make sense. What else would the plan be? The way it is set up is clearly the best way for us to accomplish our Heavenly Father's purpose. She was pretty receptive to the lesson so that was great. She also came to the baptism and enjoyed it so hopefully that helps. Halloween night we had to be in by 6, so we did our weekly planning meeting then and I also convinced Elder T to skip rocks at the pond right behind our apartment. It was fun and felt like I was back at the duck pond skipping rocks. Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful Halloween.
Friday pretty awesome. We had a lesson with B, the kid who came to the trunk-or-treat at the D's house. It went really well and he is a super nice kid. He is Shrek in the musical they are doing and his member friend (G) is Fiona. They are both really good singers. He said that he would read the Book of Mormon. He came to church too, but I'll talk about that in a second. We also had a lesson with the Fs. I love that family. I want the three girls to get baptized so badly and to have the gospel. It will make their family so much happier. We played "the flour game" with them. It is a fun game and we had a blast. I am going to try to get Sister F to send you a picture since she was bribing her kids to make sure the starburst would fall on one of us. Of course once it fell on me they buried the starburst in the flour and so I got flour everywhere getting it out. Anyways, it does tie into the gospel. We read Helaman 5:12 and asked them what would happen if the starburst was on a rock instead of flour. We told them that we have to build a foundation on the rock, who is Jesus Christ. We had each person say something they could do to build their foundation on Christ better. The three kids are warming up so much and the youngest unbaptized girl E is catching fire. She wants to read the scriptures and come to church. Unfortunately the oldest two and Sister F care more about their soccer that is always on Sunday, so they can't make it to church. Soccer ends pretty soon so hopefully they can start all coming soon. The oldest, H, is already being scouted by colleges and she is 13 and on a boys team. She is supposedly really good even though I beat her in a juggling contest. She said they never juggle to train. We are really pushing to get them to church this week for the primary program and the linger longer. It would be nice for them to make some friends in the ward.
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| Elder T and Elder Pew with the girl they taught |
Saturday was the baptism. A was also interviewed on Saturday but she passed so no problems there. We had to set up everything and then we waited for people to show up. I called and invited every family in the ward with a 9 year old, but only one or two families were able to show up. It was a good baptism. We waited for A's dad who isn't a member to come before we started. The Ss did a great job of inviting lots of people and both Bro and Sis S's family were there and none of them are members, or they are inactive. The S are sweet. Since most of the family doesn't speak English Bro S's mom translated everything being said which is interesting since she is Catholic and was bearing other people's testimonies in Spanish. She was crying during the baptism. It was a great baptism. J called and asked if we could come by so we had a lesson with him and his two kids. They are so awesome and they love us. It's sweet! The S invited us over for dinner at Sis S's parent's house so we went at like 8 and finally ate some food and dessert. We talked with all of their families who aren't members and the one who translated loved it. We talked with her for a while, but she isn't interested in switching religions. The Ss are so awesome. Church was way sweet! The testimony meeting was really powerful. G got up and bore her testimony right at B and said she wanted him to know that she knew the church was true. The Spirit was really strong. B did pull us aside and he was beyond grateful that we have been so kind to him, but he said his mom isn't comfortable with us teaching him. He has been reading from the Book of Mormon and he is definitely interested, but his mom doesn't want him to continue, so we are going to try and meet her this week. Hopefully things can be resolved since he is coming to dinner with the Ds this Wednesday with us so we can continue teaching him. He was super super grateful for all we have done and we told him no matter what happens he is a great kid and doing a great job. We told him to keep reading the Book of Mormon and that it will continue to help him. He is so nice. Sister L also invited us to come in to her Gospel Essentials class and tell the ward how they can support the full-time missionaries. We told them the best way to support us is to bring people to church and it makes us happy just to hear that they are sharing the gospel. We also shared the invitation to come and ask us who are investigators are so they can pray for them by name and how powerful it would be to have an entire ward praying for the investigators and we promised them that we would see miracles in this ward if they would do that. It was a cool experience to tell the ward how they can help us. This ward is way sweet. It was cool to see A become a member of the church this week and I know it will bless her life forever. I know she joined the church of Jesus Christ that has been restored
and that we have the fullness of the gospel. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that will bring us so much peace and happiness if we read it and abide by its teachings. Thanks for all the support from back home!
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| Elder Pew & Elder V at the birthday of B ( few weeks ago) She wanted them to be her special guests for her dinner! |
and that we have the fullness of the gospel. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that will bring us so much peace and happiness if we read it and abide by its teachings. Thanks for all the support from back home!
Love,
Elder Pew
