August 17, 2015- New Investigators
Dear Family and Friends,
This week has been a pretty crazy week deep in the
boonies of North Carolina! We have been super busy!
There aren't many solid investigators here in
Greenville so we dropped some of them and decided to go tracting and find some
new people to teach. Elder Berry and I saw a lot of miracles this week as we
taught 17 lessons and found 13 new investigators!
We met this man named Larry. He understands
everything that we have taught him. During the first lesson we were able to set
him with a baptismal date. During the
second lesson, when we asked him how long it would take to read the Book of Mormon
he said it would take a week, and he was dead serious. Sadly, he has been
really sick the past few days so he had to cancel our Saturday appointment. He also wasn't able to make it out to church,
so hopefully he gets feeling better soon.
While we were knocking on doors late on Thursday
night, a guy named Chris opened the door. We told him who we were and he told
us he wasn't interested because he was content in his church and he was already
saved. Well, we were able to get him to talk to us for a little longer by just
asking him questions. He asked us what the difference were between the LDS
church and other religions. (Elder Berry later told me that when he asked that
question I had the biggest grin on my face.) I told him that was exactly what
we wanted to teach him about. We said a prayer and then taught what was
probably one of the most powerful restoration lessons I've ever taught on my
mission. The spirit was super strong and you could tell Chris could feel it too.
I think Chris was surprised that he had felt the spirit and he was a little shy
about admitting the interest he had. We
set up another appointment with him.
When we met with him again he asked us a bunch of questions after the
lesson.
Sometimes, people are too nervous to tell us that
they aren't interested in speaking with us so they tend to hide or run from us.
On Saturday we went to visit an investigator. We knocked on his door and we
talked to his brother, but he said that he wasn't there. We went back to our car
to figure out where we were going to go next. Then, we saw a car turn onto the street
behind us, slow down and then stop. We
recognized that the car belonged to the man that we had just tried to visit, so
Elder Berry and I just sat in our car and waited to see what he would do next.
After a minute, the car began to drive again, drove right by us and then turned
the corner onto another street. The car then exited the trailer park. We noticed
that the car was parked with its lights off at the entrance of the trailer park
and was waiting for us to leave. So we left and did some more contacting in the
same trailer park on a different street.
A few minutes later we saw the same car drive down the street really
quick and park in front of his trailer and then rush into his home. I feel like
it would just be so much easier if people were just straight up with us and
told us that they weren't interested in talking to us.
I have been really tired this week. I've never been
so tired in my life. I'm super tired in the mornings and at night however I've
been blessed to not be tired during the day. Missionary work is hard work, but I
know that I'm here doing God's work. I know that God loves all of us and that
he speaks through a prophet today, President Thomas S. Monson. I know this is
the true church, and that conversion comes by the spirit.
Love y’all,
Elder Cannon
