Monday March 4, 2019
Dear Mom,
This week has been a pretty good week filled with rain and crazy temperature changes and ending with a baptism.
Monday was a pretty chill P-day. We chilled at our apartment for the morning and talked to family and emailed friends and then we went to Little Caesar's and bought some pizza. We stopped at the post office and then went to the Church. We ate lunch, talked to our families a bit more and then went to the Library. We then came back to the Church and shot hoops a bit. We then visited some people in the North part of our area and a lesson with some people we are teaching up there. Then we came home and called members on our Branch roster to confirm addresses and numbers.
Tuesday we were going to go do some service but it didn't end up working out. We drove over to the Old State Capitol and when we got there, we received a text from the lady that we work with, that she did not have anything for us for the day. So we just drove back to our apartment for lunch and to finish our studies. We then drove to a number of different areas to visit people and contact former investigators to see if they are interested in us coming over to teach them again. We had dinner with a less active family in that area and brought them a copy of the new curriculum Come Follow Me and introduced them to it. We visited some other people nearby and then came home.
Wednesday we drove down to Gonzalez for our District Council where we all met at the church building down there. We decided to switch each week so that we are all taking turns driving far for District Councils. Our District Council ended up being really long. Parts of our meeting took a lot longer than they should of and then at the end we remembered that we needed to set goals as a District for the upcoming month of March. As we were prayerfully discussing what our goals should be, we had some different opinions on what they should be so it took a lot longer for us to figure out what our goals should be. After some really good counseling and taking in of multiple opinions, we came up with some really good goals. We decided to go to Chick-Fil-A for lunch but when us four Elders got there, we realized the four Sisters were not with us. We got our food and were sitting down and then found out that they had ended up driving a long ways across town to the other Chick-Fil-A. We went to the one 3 minutes down the road. We were just going to have separate District lunches for the day. Then right as we were finishing up and about to leave, the Sisters showed up and sat down with their food. So all of us four Elders got up and got more food, lol. After lunch Elder Parker and I stayed at Chick-Fil-A and made calls and then did some planning, some language study and a little comp study as we sat out on their patio tables. We decided to go contact and knock doors in a trailer park that is full of Hispanics in Gonzales while we were down there. We were at the trailer park for about a half hour to an hour and we just didn't feel effective. We felt quite bleh. We were talking to people and stuff but we didn't feel like we were really doing something. Like maybe we weren't supposed to be there. It was a weird feeling of no real drive/motivation that we were both feeling and we felt like we weren't getting anything done. It was kind of a feeling of unaccomplishment and like we didn't know what we were doing. So we went to the car and prayed and talked about it and what we were feeling. We were trying to decide where the feeling was coming from and what the message was supposed to be. Maybe it was coming from God through the spirit and telling us we should be somewhere else and that this was not he place we should be. We also had the thought that maybe it was Satan trying to discourage us and keep us from being where we were supposed to be. We couldn't really come up with something so we thought maybe we are supposed to make a decision before we know. We were about to leave when we debated even further that it could very well be that there is someone here we need to find and Satan doesn't want us to find them. So with that thought we got back out of the car and walked back down the street. We were walking and looking around and Elder Parker said "lets knock that house with the red car" so we walked over and knocked the door. A Hispanic lady opened the door and invited us right on in. We went in and introduced ourselves and explained what we do. We shared a little of what our message is and also invited her to the English class on Thursdays that the Sisters do. It was late for them so we scheduled a time to come back and she said she would come checkout our Church. It was a cool little experience. We then knocked some more doors and met a couple more people that we scheduled to visit again.
Thursday was MLC (Mission Leadership Conference) and Elder Parker is a ZL (Zone Leader) so Elder Hawks, who is now a ZL as well but down in New Orleans, came up with his companion, Elder Hernandez. Elder Parker and Elder Hawks drove to the Mission Home for MLC and Elder Hernandez and I stayed to work our area on exchanges. Not too long after they left they called us and told us that we were actually supposed to go the Mission Home too because an Elder, Elder Leach, was supposed to be in a trio with us for the day. We got in the car and I drove us to the Mission Home and when we got there they were all still eating breakfast and President Varner invited us to go in the kitchen and get a little food to eat as well. We definitely took him up on that offer and Sister Varner made sure to make some more waffles for us and make sure that we got fed well. We had some of the leftover yogurt cups, eggs and hash browns, waffles with fruit, her famous caramel syrup, and whipped cream and orange juice. We helped her clean up as all the other missionaries and President Varner started MLC. We then left and came back to the apartment so Elder Leach could change into service clothes. We drove to the USS Kidd, a battleship/museum where the missionaries do service. When we got there we were told to go out to the battleship and someone out there would direct us in what to do. We were then told to walk down the side of the ship and then to go down to some lower levels to meet a guy who would give us something to do. We got down to him and he was very stressed due to all the extra stuff he had to worry about since the replica ship of the Santa Maria that Christopher Columbus sailed on was docked up with them for the week. He told us since he didn't have anything we could do while all the mayhem was going on and since we were all new to the ship, we should take a tour and be on patrol for anyone who was not where they were supposed to be and then to tell the group of Veterans up top if we found someone. He said that would be like sicking a pack of Pitbulls and German Shepherds on them. He also told us that some of those guys have served on sister ships to this one and would not be happy if people were disrespecting the ship and that even thought they were in their 70's, 80's, and 90's they wouldn't be afraid to throw people off the ship. Now that would be a sight and if you were the person getting thrown off, quite an embarrassment, haha. That was the assignment he gave us. And then when we were done, we were to come back to Sam at the front. We toured the ship, then came back, went over to a lady selling stuff for the Santa Maria and we helped her do inventory and work out all the kinks and organize what she was selling. We then were invited to tour the Santa Maria, which was really cool too. We then left and drove back home to change back into proselyting clothes. We got a call that MLC was over so we drove back to the Mission Home and switched companions back. It was cool to see some missionaries I haven't seen in a long time. Elder Leach and Elder Wiscombe and Elder Parker and I then went to Olive Garden for dinner. It was some very good food I do have to say. Elder Parker and I visited some people for the evening.
Friday we had our studies in the morning, lunch and then we went to the Church and we did some weekly planning. We learned a lot about Family History and we watched some devotionals and stuff on it because we are going to be kind of like the Family History Consultants for the branch to help them become more missionary minded. It will help introduce them to missionary work so that we can start working with them in a better way. We got super hyped about it as we were watching devos and stuff. That evening we went over to a part-member family's house and we ate dinner with them and talked more about Family History and got to know them and hear their conversion stories. We then went to a family that we are teaching and a YSA member who is a return missionary and is Hispanic came with us and was a great help in our lesson.
Saturday we walked over to a member's apartment in our complex for Branch correlation. Tehy feed us and the Sisters breakfast and then we talk about our people. Afterwards, Elder Parker and I went to the Church to learn more about Family History from the Stake Consultants that are there at that time on Saturdays. We got there and nobody was there, so that was disappointing. We tried to learn a bit on our own but it was difficult on our phones so we did some studies. Later we went back to the Church and set up for baptism and filled up the font. A family we have been visiting has an eight year old daughter who was going to be baptized. The father is not a member bu the mother is. It was a member baptism but they asked that one of us would baptize her. I was given that privilege and it was a really cool experience to baptize her in Spanish. The baptism went well and afterwards we all ate some tostadas and refreshments. We then cleaned everything up and went to visit a less active member that we met earlier in the week. We met his family and shared a little message with them.
Sunday we were suppose to have multiple people come to church but none of them actually came. . .sad day. We did have Abril's whole family there for her confirmation though which was good. We also had a really good Sunday school class with lots of discussion. We came home after church and did some studies and a lot of language study. While at the apartment it rained super hard and flooded the swamp next to our apartment and also the parking lot. In the morning until afternoon it was in the 70's but by the evening it was in the 40's, it dropped about 30 degrees in a matter of hours. That evening we visited some people and then we knocked at one apartment complex we found where Hispanics live. We then went to Abril's house and filled out the baptismal form/record.
It was a really good week and it rained many times though it definitely rained the hardest on Sunday. Until next week!
Love,
Elder Acton
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