I have learned something this week - when a new missionary comes into an area, the entire area is turned upside-down. Elder Blake's presence in this area has caused all kinds of things to happen, both good and bad. Most of what happened was completely out of our control, but I can say we've had a lot of amazing miracles.

 

Take Spanish, for example. Elder Nelson was a Spanish missionary. I am not. This is a Spanish-speaking area. In fact, one part of Lebanon is called "Little Puerto Rico" simply because of how many Spanish Speakers live up there. Needless to say, as I have mentioned before, a lot of the time we were on the street, Elder Nelson would just talk to the people in Spanish while I would wait for the conversation to finish. Well, Elder Nelson isn't here now. And Elder Blake doesn't speak Spanish.

 

This is a problem.

 

Fortunately, I was able to pick up a little bit of Spanish from Elder Nelson before he left. Unfortunately, the only thing I know how to say is "How are you doing?" and "Can I give you a card about the Book of Mormon?" That's about as much as I dare say, because if I try any more, I might say something bad like "I hope you have a terrible day!" or "We are bananas from the Church..." Nobody has really laughed at what I have said yet... just given blank stares.

 

I think I have tracted more in the past week than I have ever tracted in my entire life. We needed to. Our teaching pool took a pretty hard hit this week when we dropped another 4 investigators. So we took to the streets to find more people to teach. Of course we were met with a lot of "Not interested", "We're *insert religion in here*", or "GET OFF MY PORCH!" But for every 20 of those, we were able find someone who was sincerely interested. A lot of people are looking for the truth, they are just disguised as people who don't look very interested.

 

We were tracting up this one street one day when I saw a door on the other side of the street. I was immediately impressed to go to it. When we got there, I saw something both very funny and very confusing: "No visits from Mormons." It was a polite sign, and I would have respected it, except for the fact that the Spirit kept telling me "You need to contact these people!" So, I left a card. My reasoning was a card didn't count as a visit. We left, feeling very justified.

 

We came back a few days later to find the sign was taken down. Curious, we walked over to the house. The owner came out to greet us. "Here!" he said, handing us some generic Evangelical tracts (those are papers or pamphlets which talk about bible verses. These ones in particular talked about being 'saved'). He told us that he took the signs down because he realized that we were just trying to spread the message of the Gospel, and thought that he shouldn't stop us from doing what we think is right. We had a great chat with him, didn't get a return appointment. But that's okay. The seed is planted. (We did notice, though, that signs had gone up on the house across the street, which we did knock on, saying "No Mormons!" Oh, irony.)

 

You know those awesome stories that you hear about other missionaries, but could never happen to you? Well, it happened to me. We had an appointment drop, so we went to a street nearby to tract. We knock on the first door. It opens. The father comes to the door. We barely have time to introduce ourselves before he says "Come in!"

 

"What?" I say, a little shocked.

 

"Come in! What, do you want to stay on my porch?"

 

So we went in. He seated us down, introduced us to his two kids. His wife was out working. He told us about how he is Catholic by name, but really doesn't have much faith or much knowledge of the Gospel. He recognizes the sins that he is committing and wants to change them. He wants to find the truth. The more he talked, the more our jaws dropped. We had a lesson right then and their about the Atonement, set a return appointment, and left with a skip in our step.

 

We also had three run-ins with people who turned the tables and preached to us. One of them was a crazy JW, who we really didn't pay any attention to (she went on about nuking the wicked with a-bombs), another guy who honestly was preaching to us something he truly believed in (some evangelical minister who called himself a prophet. My impression was that he was more of a fortune teller), and one man who truly was on a mission to destroy the church. He was very polite, but his words towards us were certainly filled with venom. He basically called Joseph Smith a fraud and defamed everything we stand for and believe in. The funny thing - he was constantly contradicting himself. We didn't even have to do anything. We didn't point any of those contradictions out, but that only gave me a greater testimony of the truth.

 

One more cool story. This one is about Ed. Ed is a less active member who I've been visiting since I got out here. He's agoraphobic, nervous, is always sick with something, and is most certainly OCD. We always have to do the same thing when we visit him - read one chapter from the Book of Mormon, one chapter from the Bible, and one chapter from the D&C. His house is a shine of stuff, and is also a shrine of mold, so he's actually been living with his sister, who is not a member, on and off.

 

Well, we went tracting one day in a new neighborhood. We knock on a door. A man comes with a sweatshirt over his head and one eye poking out the head hole. I was so confused that I choked in my words and couldn't say anything. The the man pulled down the sweatshirt. It was Ed, being strange. The house we had knocked on was his sisters house completely by coincidence (or was it?). As we talked to him, a car pulled up - his niece. She got out and rushed into the house, and Elder Blake poked me. "That was that girl we set up an appointment with earlier this week." What? She came back out, and sure enough, it was her. When we set up the appointment, we knew that she had an uncle who is a member, but we had no idea it was Ed. We also had no idea that she would be there in that neighborhood that day. We also found out that if we had tried to call to set up another appointment, she wouldn't have been home because she was going to Pittsburgh for the weekend. So, we set something up for this coming week, and let her go on her way.

 

We had a lot of very cool things happen this week. Like I said last week, the Lord does answer prayers. I've been relying on prayer so much this week, and every time the answer comes. The Atonement is real. It truly can change us, if we let it. We really do have a loving Heavenly Father who wants us to be happy. And I know that this is truly His true church, the truest of all the churches, with the fullness of doctrine and the authority of the Priesthood. And I know that all of us can overcome any trial we might go through. It's possible. But you just have to Believe in Christ and Believe Christ.

 

Take Care, everyone!

Love,

Elder Anderson, AKA Missionary Slim