February 27, 2017

So as a Zone we set a goal to have 80 New Investigators this week, and we beat that by A LOT! We had 123 :) A new investigator is someone you meet, you teach them a point of doctrine an set up a time and day to come back and they say yes. Good things are happening :) The highlight of my week was probably the exchange to Downtown Indy when I got to visit the Etta's. Everyone always talks about how you have to love the people when you're on your mission and I love Nigerians. I love talking to them, asking about their country and learning what they eat. I am going to ask President Carlson this week in Interviews if I can start doing language study for 30 minutes a day to learn Yoruba (African Dialect they speak in Nigeria). I already know a little bit and they love it when we speak it to them.

This week we were in a lesson and I used a cool analogy that came to my mind with a guy named Olukayode. He was trying to understand what the Book of Mormon was and why we need it. I told him it's like this "If you go outside and look at the moon right now and draw a picture of it, and then fly to Nigeria and draw a picture of the moon there, it's going to look different, but it's the same moon. The Book of Mormon is a witness from a different nation about Jesus Christ, the same Jesus Christ in Jerusalem". And that made a lot of sense to him. We had 3 investigators come to church! Vesnel, Josh, and Sheila. Now we need to get the Nigerians coming :) The goal is to have a Nigerian branch here :) This week we put Josh on baptismal date for March 26! His wife is is a member, and they just got married. This week we were on exchanges and so I was with different missionaries all week but it was fun! Haha Nigerians are so shocked when I start saying words in Yoruba.

Another miracle happened this week, so after church we went on a quick exchange, Me and Elder Chapple went together to go visit Tony (a guy he taught in this area almost 2 years ago when he was here) we go knock on the door and Tony answers and tells us he just had surgery and it seemed like he wasn't going to let us in his house. But then it was almost like God whispered to him "Let them in, you need to talk to them" because out of nowhere he told us to come inside and told us to sit down. After talking for a bit he told us it was ironic we came to his house, because of things that happened in his life. He had been on Elder Chapple's mind so it made this even a cooler experience. So pretty much we found out that his family is Catholic, Jehovah Witness, Baptist and his brother just joined the Mormon church. Pretty much what he told us was that he was on the phone with his brother and his brother was sharing a little bit about our church and it wasn't all making sense to Tony. His brother told him not to worry because missionaries would come around sometime and teach him, but he would have to actually study what we teach, pray, and actually sit down and talk to us, instead of just accepting a Bible and Book of Mormon and having us leave. And then we knocked on his door. In his words he said it was kind of creepy. He told us his mom who is Jehovah Witness said that if she was not Jehovah Witness, she would be Mormon which was kind of a shock. Tony told us he's Christian, and said if he claimed a church, it would be the Mormon church and he's not even a member, now we have to get him baptized. He talked about how he saw our missionaries in dangerous places, and he just saw us everywhere and thought we had an unreal amount of faith because we don't carry weapons or anything we just know that we're protected.

Sheila still has us over all the time and she's still trying to quit smoking. The Bishop gave her advice.. So while she was trying to quit smoking she was trying to quit drinking Dr. Pepper (Since she was addicted to it as well) and she quit the Dr. Pepper. Bishop Stephens said drink the Dr. Pepper and quit smoking, that's the important thing, so pretty much use the Dr. Pepper to help quit smoking, so she can get baptized and once she's baptized, then quit Dr. Pepper. Also, in the past she had been making it known to everyone in the ward that she was quitting smoking to try and help her, but instead it caused stress because she thought that if she failed everyone would think she's a failure and it caused stress which made her want a cigarette and now she's doing it pretty much in secret. I thought that was interesting. 

I was with Elder Dunyon this week and he's brand new missionary, I always take the brand new missionaries to the most scary, dangerous apartment complex :) Hahaha. 

I love you guys and miss you :)

 

This week we made POG (Passionfruit-Orange Juice-Guava) and Poy which is mashed up Taro (Hawaiian Potato) with Cocunut milk and we put Lihingmui (Polynesian powder) on Pineapple and dipped in in Poy. SO GOOD. I also ate Horse!

The Etta's! I got to visit them :) They are the family I was lucky enough to find online as a referral from 2-3 years ago who I sent to White River Elders and they taught them and baptized them within 5 weeks and 2 weeks after that they went to the Indianapolis Temple to do baptisms!