October
20, 2014- Reaching Our Teaching Goals
Hey Family and Friends!!
This week has been a really good week!!
Oompa lumpa is super fun game that all the Elders
in our area play on p-day once a week.
Don't worry, President Baker has approved that we could play it on
p-day. We all wake up around 5:30 a.m. to get to the church at 6 a.m. Oompa
Lumpa is played with the rules of ultimate frisbee but we use a football
instead of a frisbee. We play until 7 a.m. and then we head back to our
apartments so that we can start our scripture studies by 8 a.m. There is a
Elder here who played quarterback in High School. Whenever we are on the same team, he just
throws it down the court and I jump up and catch it even when there are a bunch
of people guarding me. This is one way I am staying in shape here.
On Tuesday, we went to a car dealership and
translated for one of the less active members we are teaching. His name is
Valerio and he's from Guatemala. Its pretty cool actually because most less
active members here are really nice to us and they love having us over to
talk. They just don't like going to
church but they still have strong testimonies of the gospel. Some of my friends who are serving a mission
in South America have told me that they are struggling with the same issue
there.
We ran into some Jehovah Witnesses on Wednesday. My
companion and I went to Edwin and Miriam’s home, two of our investigators. We
got out of the car right as two Hispanic ladies came out of the house. They had
a bunch of pamphlets and other stuff in their hands. We walked by them and Elder Remund said to
one of them "Como estan?" which means "how are you" and one
of them responded, "Bien, gracis a Jehova" which means "Good,
thanks to Jehovah." Once they said
that, we instantly we knew that they were Jehovah witnesses. They went over to their car and we started
talking to Miriam on her porch. But out of the corner of my eye I could see
that the Jehovah Witnesses were still in their car and they were watching us. A
minute went by, then two, and then five and they were still there. Finally one
of them got out of the car, walked over to us and interrupted our conversation
with Miriam by introducing herself and then tried to give us some religious
pamphlets. No need to worry about our
investigator Miriam talking with the Jehovah Witnesses. She and Edwin are super
solid and have a baptismal date on January 10th. The only reason she let them
in was so that she could bible bash them.
One of our investigators is named Yiovanni. We
taught him the lesson about the Restoration, and it went really well. However,
we haven't been able to teach him for a few weeks because he keeps telling us
when we call him that he will call us when he is free to have another lesson.
We didn't really know why he was avoiding us, we thought maybe he was just
trying to get rid of us. On Thursday, we
found out why he has been avoiding us. Apparently, he owes Edwin and Miriam
(our investigators) and a member named Sescibel a lot of money, and he hasn't
paid them back. Some of the members in
the branch have been asking us to give them Yiovanni's address because they plan
to take him to court to recover their money, so we gave them his address. We
decided that for now it was best to drop our lessons with him.
One of the goals that Elder Remund and I had for
this week was to get six member presents for the week. We worked really hard
and were able to get two member presents on Wednesday, and two on Thursday.
However we weren't able to get any member presents on Friday and Saturday so that
meant that we needed to get two on Sunday.
On Sunday, we went over to Edis’ home for a
teaching appointment. She needed help packing a bunch of clothes because she
was sending some clothes to her poorer family members. After that she said she
wanted to take us over to one of her neighbor's houses to see if we could help
them. We went over there and met an elderly gentleman. After talking to him, we
discovered that he had a chronic health problem that was really flaring up at
the moment. We offered to give him a blessing. Even though he hadn't ever
talked with missionaries before he accepted, and so I anointed oil on his head
and then Elder Remund gave him a blessing. It clearly was a miracle that we
were able to go talk to him and pray with him because if not, Elder Remund and
I would not have been able to reach our goal of six member presents.
Lastly I want to let you know how Jeff is doing in
his progress toward baptism. He has been
coffee free for one and a half weeks, beer free for almost a week and cigarette
free since Saturday. So if he keeps this up he will be able to be baptized on November
1st. Jeff is super excited. I appreciate all the people who have been praying
for him! Your prayers have definitely helped him!!
-Elder Cannon
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