Jackie Chan

Yolo,

Elder Paxman speaking.

This week was a pretty normal week I guess... We received Elder Tays on Tuesday. It's super fun to have him with us. I remember when he first started his mission in Sunnyside (Yakima Stake). He was struggling because everything was all so new to him. He has only been a member for 2 years now and it still shows sometimes but in other things it seems like he's been a member his whole life. This is the first time I've had a companion who is a convert and it's been super useful. He can really connect with people on a fundamental level. Hopefully Elder Hansen and I just fill in the blanks. It's been a fun week and I'm excited to keep it going with Elder Tays from Richmond Virginia.

 

Another thing that's fun is that my past three companions have all been from somewhere other than Utah and people love it! Members are always disappointed when you say you're from Utah, unless your companion isn't from Utah, then it's okay. And now I have two companions from California and Virginia! People love it. It's fun :). And Elder Tays has a little drawl too so that makes it even better. 

It was go go go all week. We had three district meetings to be at instead of two this week because of transfers. Transfers was on a Tuesday which made it impossible for some people to hold district meeting but others could, so we had D.M. on Tues Wed and Thurs... Lots of meetings.

 

On Saturday we actually got out at 10. It was the first time we were able to do that in awhile. Usually our mornings are filled up with meetings or planning time. This upcoming week will be no exception. We have stake correlation on Wednesday night. I love those meetings. It's so great to learn from all the men of the church in this area.

Cool story. We have been going through a potential investigators sheet lately to find new investigators. One of the names on the list was Jackie and it said that he was an 18 y/o male that still lived at home. We stopped by a few times and we caught his mom at home but that's all. His mom is Asian and we thought it was funny because this kid's name is Jackie. So we joked around all week calling him Jackie Chan. We stopped by again last night and caught him at home. We talked a little on his doorstep and then I asked him if people called him Jackie Chan in high school because his name is Jackie and he's Asian. he said "yeah, it started in the 3rd grade" I said "wow that started pretty early, no mercy from your friends" Then he said "yeah, the teachers would go down the roll and they would stop at my name and ask if it was a practical joke or something" Then I stopped and said "wait, what's your last name?" and He said "Chan". So his name really is Jackie Chan hahaha. So funny. He loves it too.

 

Another crazy thing about Jackie is that he is planning on majoring in business at central washington university and wants to go into fashion design. He is going to open up a clothing store in Richland with one of his buddies. And he has a huge collection of shoes. He loves shoes. At one point he had 200 pairs but he sold 150 pairs of shoes to a company in California for $30,000 to make a down payment on a Lexus. It's a nice Lexus. And he's 18 years old! He brought us upstairs to show us what's left of his collection. He has some really really nice shoes. My favorite pair were probably the Space Jams. They are the same kind of shoe that Michael Jordan wore in the movie Space Jam. He said they were worth $600 brand new. He goes to shoe conventions in Seattle every year to buy sell and trade shoes. Crazy stuff. It was pretty cool. He's my new best friend.

We also saw the Morgans this week. They came to church too! They are very open with us and have told us before that they think church is boring and that they are lazy and don't want to go. But they have been coming nonetheless and are seeming to enjoy themselves more and more each week. They have tons of friends in the church already so that's not a problem. We actually run into the problem of having too many fellowshippers haha. We don't know who to take with us on any given week and we don't want to hurt feelings of their fellowshippers by saying we don't need them. Everything is flowing really well. We are getting there with them. They just need to fully commit to it and get baptized. I think the biggest things is that they need to read the Book of Mormon more consistently. They read it but prefer to read other things like the ensign and other church books that have been given to them. We're trying to focus on the Book of Mormon though because they still aren't certain that it's true. Kelly Morgan has had a lot of problems with Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon in the past but hasn't put in the work to get past that yet. She has been coming to church which I'm sure helps, but there's more that she, and we, can do to help build a testimony of the Book of Mormon.

We went through a cleansing of our teaching pool again this week. We dropped a lot of people that weren't going anywhere. We really only have like 10 really good investigators who have real intent. The rest are on our radar but haven't shown much interest past letting us in the first time. Hopefully we will have a lot of time this week to refresh our pool with new investigators.

I've probably said it before but I saw it even more this week. One of my favorite things about missionary work is that it you're having a bad day you know exactly how to turn it around. You just go outside and talk to people! Talking to everyone is the perfect antidote to any missionaries' problems. It was 8:00 last night and we had taught a few lessons but hadn't recorded any OYM's yet and we were all feeling a little sluggish and down so we decided to park and find people to talk to. The first one we talked to was convinced that Joseph Smith was a drunk and a drug addict. So we dismissed him quickly. But even with that experience I felt so much better and excited to do the work again! It's amazing that even (perhaps especially) in the presence of rejection and opposition we still feel the joy of being a successful missionary. You just have to get out and talk to people! So that's what we did for the next 20 minutes and then to finish our night we stopped by Jackie Chan's house and that's when we met him for the first time. The Lord blesses us when we put forth an effort. We will always receive supernatural aid when we exert ourselves.

Well, I think that's all. This was a pretty dang good email compared to last week. So enjoy it :)

Love,

Elder Paxman