New Investigors and Updates

We got 5 new people to teach this week. They're all really cool too.

Two are in the YSA, one in 6th ward and two in 1st ward.

About a month ago, Elder Lyells and I were tracting out in the middle of nowhere. We picked a random street with about 5 houses on it and decided to knock doors. It was late at night and the first lady we talked to told us, first, that she wasn't interested, and second, that there were a lot of mean dogs in the area. But we kept knocking anyways. The next door we knocked was Branan Rains. He said we could come back another night and that evenings were best for him. So we wrote his address down and that was that. Then we went down an even darker street and started walking up a driveway and almost got eaten alive by a huge german shepherd. Elder Lyells stood his ground and I started to run away haha. Thankfully Elder Lyells' instincts are much better than mine because if we both would have backed off as I did then the dog would have probably chased after us. But Elder Lyells backed up slowly and the dog went back home. But the best part of the story is the first part. With Branan.

 

We weren't able to get back there until the other night. We knocked and Branan told us he was busy. We pushed a little more and told him we would only be a few minutes and he invited us in. We met his wife and brother and two kids that live with him. He and his brother, David, told us that they were members, but Branan's wife, Katie, is not a member. So David and Branan have been less-active for years and Katie let us know that she wants to get back to church. Branan made the comment that if he goes back to any church it will be the LDS church. Katie said she was fine with that. We kept the visit short like we said we would and set up a return appointment for this evening at 7. We're really excited for that one! They all seem to have a lot of potential.

 

Side note: we checked the ward roster for their name and address and it wasn't on there. We wouldn't have been able to find them any other way than by tracting that random street late at night in the cold with killer dogs. The Lord knows all of his children.

Brandon Chase and Gage are all on date. February 2nd. That date might change for the sake of scheduling purposes, but he wants to be baptized and so do the kids. The didn't come to church this Sunday though... I'm not really sure why. We'll find out tomorrow. I think it was mostly because Candice was out of town so she wasn't there to push them out of bed. Oh well. They're great. They're getting baptized.

Craig Hancox is back on date too. Turns out he doesn't like our Ward Mission Leader... Drama. I don't like it. Our WML thinks they like him but they don't. But he wants to come to all the lessons and they just get annoyed and cancel appointments because they know he's coming then they get really put off and don't keep commitments. It's dumb. And we don't really know how to tell our WML that they don't like him and we can't go over there with him... We'll probably have to skirt around that one. Bishop Kimzey knows that our WML rubs some people the wrong way sometimes and we will try to work through him. Our WML is the best WML I've ever had. He is great. He works really hard and is always trying to help us. He is just kinda inappropriate/annoying sometimes and that bugs people. BUT, Craig wants to get baptized nonetheless. And he's excited too. We just have to get him to church. And his Recent Convert wife too... She just got a new job. She works 7 days a week. She is trying to get Sundays off but is having a hard time. It should all work out though. Craig's a good guy.

Trina should be baptized this Saturday. We hope. She's brought up some concerns over the past few days. I'm not terribly worried, but it could result in pushing back her baptism. This is going to be a rough week for her. We'll see what we can do... Pray that she gets baptized!

Kaysie and Jimmy are still funny. Jimmy swears so so so much. It's ridiculous. But he is so funny. He loves what we're teaching him and is convinced that all other churches are liars haha. We are trying to tell him that they aren't lying. They just don't know any better. I think he understands that but everything we are teaching him makes so much sense to him that he is convinced that all other churches are lying. And he has a lot of experiences in the past that have confused him on what is and isn't truth. He kinda believes everything we tell him though which is nice. He really likes us. And we really like him. He's the best. We just want him to come to church!!! He and Kaysie missed again this week because he got off work late. As in 8:30 in the morning... He goes in to work at 7pm so it's understandable that he doesn't make it to church but we still want him there. And he says he can. There's still a lot of work to do.

That's pretty much everyone I think... There was a really fun YSA party on Friday night. We went to the first 30 minutes of it because we had a few investigators there. But we had to go because it was our bedtime :( It made me want to be in YSA. That was a hoppin' party.

The Seahawks lost. So everyone in Washington is sad. But that was the best thing that could ever happen to us because now people will come to church!

The Broncos lost. I don't want to talk about it...

I don't even know what else happened this week. Probably a lot of stuff that I'm forgetting.

It seems like we ran into a lot of Anti-Mormon literature this week. And a lot of people wanted to Bible Bash with us. We tried not to... But everyone was in an arguing mood this week ha ha. Soooo, we tried not to argue. But some people just insisted.

That's all I got.

Love,

Elder Paxman