So another week has gone by in the greatest mission on earth, and President’s plans are pushing forward. The biggest thing Elder Foster told President to do with the mission from now on to get the baptisms back up is to teach the rising generation correct principles quickly, pretty much to have great trainers. He told President that being a trainer should be the highest calling in the mission, more so than zone leader, and only excellent missionaries should ever be trainers. So this last week we had a lot of special changes all involving zone leaders so they can all train when the new missionaries come in December. There are going to be 9 new Elders and every single one of them will have a trainer that was a zone leader this last change. We worked a lot with that this week, and it looks like it is really going to help the mission, its logical, trainers really do affect the way a missionary turns out.
Other good news, finally for the very first time yesterday President talked about me getting a replacement, I had been waiting for that day for the longest time. He came up to me while I was at my computer and asked, “Elder Adamson, how long to do think it will take you to train a replacement?” Then I showed him this new training program I was making to speed up the training process, and, in indirect terms, he pretty much told me the day I would leave the office would be January 19th, which means probably the 29th of December my replacement will come into the office and I’ll have 3 weeks to train him. I can’t believe I have already been here in the office for 5 months. Time has gone by so fast. President wants me to finish my training program by the end of next week to be able to make a final decision on how long I will have to train and when I’ll be leaving the office, so I’m going to be working really hard this week to make it as detailed as possible. It already is pretty detailed, I already have 51 pages with hyperlinks and things and I’m only on week 2 responsibilities of a 6 week change. It’s a really cool document, I made it so it has all of these cool links, so you’re reading what you need to do and you think, “I don’t know how to do that” and the words are actually a link, so you click the thing you don’t know how to do and it takes you right to the page that explains how to do it, then on the bottom of the page it has a link right back to the page you were on, it’s really nifty, and really helpful. Anyway, so that’s my big project for right now, I like to call it the “If I do this really well I might get out of the office sooner” project, so I’m working really hard on it. With all this crazy stuff going down in the mission, who knows, maybe I’ll be training when January comes, the way it looks right now, and by what the assistants have told me, when I do leave I will either train or be a zone leader, honestly I’d rather train, but we´ll see what happens, it kind of looks like President from now on wants people to be zone leaders before they train, but you never know.
So, I don’t really have tons of time to write, and honestly I don’t really know what to say, other than the changes happening in the mission it has been a pretty normal and boring week, Thanksgiving wasn’t really anything special, everyone kind of forgot and then at the end of the day Elder Dailey and I went to Burger King to get Thanksgiving dinner, which turned out to be not such a great idea because we ended up eating around 10 PM and it didn’t sit very well the next day. I’m glad everything went well for Becky performing in the Forgotten Carols, I wish I could have been there. It would be wonderful to be in some snow too, Christmas really makes me miss snow. It is so hot here right now, 95, but it even feels hotter, and it technically isn’t even summer yet. I have this little side bar on my computer with the weather here and the weather in Spokane right next to each other and sometimes I like to put them in Celsius because it makes it look like it’s so cold there.
Anyway, as for P-day, our dueños finally came over today with a metal guy and a carpenter to fix the damage that was done when the house was robbed, so our house is pretty safe now. The construction here is so funny, how unprofessionally professionals do their work. Last week they came over to get all the measurements of the front door to make the piece we needed during the week and they came to install it and all the measurements were wrong, it was funny and they had to drill through the metal and make new holes. Then after that we all went to Cocodrilo, that gym we go to, to play some soccer. There was this guy there practicing that plays professionally here. He was born in Costa Rica, but grew up in Miami, so we just spoke together in English the whole time and we had him play with us, he just dribbled right around all of us the whole game, but it was still really fun. I think Cocodrilo is really doing me good, I was worried when I came into the office that I would gain weight sitting down all the time, but I’ve actually lost about 6 pounds and toned out a lot more just by going to this gym an hour every morning, I attached a picture to see if it reminds you of anything, but yeah, I love going to the gym in the morning.
Anyway, I’m about out of time, I love you all so much, hope you all have a great week and enjoy the Christmas Season with snow, because you never know, next year you could be celebrating Christmas in 100 degree weather, enjoy it while it lasts, I love you all, Elder Adamson V
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Week 53 in Paraguay Change 9 Week 4
This week passed by so fast, I have no idea what happened to it, it’s like we were just leaving church to go home and eat 10 minutes ago and now it’s already the end of P-day again. It is amazing how fast the time goes by. The week probably went by so fast though because of how much work there was, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Elder Foster was here for zone conferences. I’m glad I was able to be in the office during the experience, we didn’t get to have a meeting with him or anything, but we definitely got a little more time to talk to him, chat with him as an office. It was really interesting the whole experience with him here and I really was able to learn a whole lot of things, one thing really stuck out, and one thing I didn’t even really acknowledge before, is how greatly important it is for the learner in a teaching situation to have the spirit as well, it doesn’t matter how full of the spirit the teacher is, even if it is a seventy, like Elder Foster, if the learners didn’t come prepared to learn.
It was amazing the difference of the spirit felt from the Monday meeting to the Tuesday meeting, we office Elders were even able to talk to Elder Foster a little bit about it. It was amazing how the same people can teach the same thing to different audiences and there be such a difference in the spirit. On Monday, to say the least, there was not much respect among the missionaries to the fact that there was a General Authority present at the meeting. It seemed almost as if the missionaries came that first day more to socialize with mission buddies they hadn’t seen in a long time than to really learn from the things being taught. That message was quite evident, much more then I think Elder Foster and President would have liked. On Tuesday it was just like night and day, the spirit in the room was so strong and we were able to learn and apply the things being taught. It was a lot of fun to see the difference. It was really a great experience to meet Elder Foster. If you don’t know who he is or don’t remember, he gave a great talk about mothers in the April conference of this year, I would invite everyone to go to lds.org and look for it because it really was a great talk. We didn’t even really notice who he was and then after he left we found the talk and remembered how much we had liked it when we heard it back in April. Anyway, so conferences were pretty much life Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we had to set up, help with lunch, help missionaries, everything, so we didn’t really get to go out and work much those days, actually on Wednesday we had all the people from far away areas here and we had to drive them to the terminal and everything, so we didn’t get to work at all that day.
Anyway, so then after that Thursday rolls around, when President got to the office he called in his assistants and they were in there together in a meeting for over 3 hours, so all of us office Elders were sitting out in the office just thinking about what kind of interesting stuff could have been going on in there and the plans they could have been concocting, then they came out just in time for lunch and President told us he wanted to have a super confidential meeting with everyone, which has never happened ever, at least since I’ve been in the office, and I’ve been here longer than anyone else now, so we thought something really big was happening or something. President shared with us many things he had learned about mission organization from Elder Foster and thoughts he had of some changes which could be implemented. It was so very interesting and I felt privileged to be part of this special meeting.
Since then, really since the beginning of this week, we have been having great things happening in our area, all of our past investigators have just kind of petered out, including Laura’s family, who we still visit every once in a while, but they aren’t really progressing at all, it is so hard to not try and just teach them more and more though, because of how close we have got to them and how much they have come to mean to us, but the more we get out in our area the better things get and people literally are just coming out of nowhere. We had a man show up at the church and ask when we have church, so we got his number and just taught him yesterday for the first time and put a baptismal date with him. He has a family too that we haven’t met yet we are hoping he will bring to church tomorrow, but if not we will meet them after. We have been getting into a lot of houses and finding receptive people, it is so interesting because I really felt like we have just contacted everywhere. I have been in this area longer than any of my other areas and now there are things just popping out I hadn’t seen before. It is awesome because we have really been struggling to get things going these last couple weeks. Yesterday it was 7:00pm and we only had one lesson and one new investigator, so we put a goal to both do ten contacts and finish the night with one more lesson and one more new investigator, at 9:05pm we both had done 14 contacts and hadn’t been received by a single person. So we were thinking about just going home and then I asked my companion to just contact this one last house, so we did and the lady came out and it started like she was just going turn out like all the other contacts we had done, but we started to solve some of her doubts and testify to her right there at the front gate and after about 5-10 minutes of talking and discussing things at the gate she let us in. We sat on her porch and taught her and two of her daughters, met her husband and had a great lesson and in the end we left them with 2 copies of the Book of Mormon and they seemed really excited to read. They can’t go to church tomorrow because they are traveling this weekend, but they said we could come back on Monday when they get back and they would go to church with us the next week. We have had so many things just like that happen to us lately, just miracle after miracle this last week, we even got into this super nice house, nicer than the average house in the states, with nice couches and a huge flat screen TV and everything, and taught a great lesson to a 16 year old guy that by the end of the lesson accepted an invitation to be baptized. Hopefully all the work can turn into people in church tomorrow, right now we should have one man in church for sure, and hopefully we can get a few more than that though.
So all in all it has been a great and really spiritually uplifting week, I hope everyone is doing great and everyone has a great Thanksgiving.
Oh, I almost forgot my biggest news, after that meeting with President on Thursday we broke out the Christmas decorations and went crazy, it was so much fun, and I even got to put the star on the tree, I pretty much did everything though, being the one that was the most eager and into doing it, but I had help, so we are all ready for Christmas here, only 5 more weeks! I love you all sooo much, Elder Adamson V
It was amazing the difference of the spirit felt from the Monday meeting to the Tuesday meeting, we office Elders were even able to talk to Elder Foster a little bit about it. It was amazing how the same people can teach the same thing to different audiences and there be such a difference in the spirit. On Monday, to say the least, there was not much respect among the missionaries to the fact that there was a General Authority present at the meeting. It seemed almost as if the missionaries came that first day more to socialize with mission buddies they hadn’t seen in a long time than to really learn from the things being taught. That message was quite evident, much more then I think Elder Foster and President would have liked. On Tuesday it was just like night and day, the spirit in the room was so strong and we were able to learn and apply the things being taught. It was a lot of fun to see the difference. It was really a great experience to meet Elder Foster. If you don’t know who he is or don’t remember, he gave a great talk about mothers in the April conference of this year, I would invite everyone to go to lds.org and look for it because it really was a great talk. We didn’t even really notice who he was and then after he left we found the talk and remembered how much we had liked it when we heard it back in April. Anyway, so conferences were pretty much life Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we had to set up, help with lunch, help missionaries, everything, so we didn’t really get to go out and work much those days, actually on Wednesday we had all the people from far away areas here and we had to drive them to the terminal and everything, so we didn’t get to work at all that day.
Anyway, so then after that Thursday rolls around, when President got to the office he called in his assistants and they were in there together in a meeting for over 3 hours, so all of us office Elders were sitting out in the office just thinking about what kind of interesting stuff could have been going on in there and the plans they could have been concocting, then they came out just in time for lunch and President told us he wanted to have a super confidential meeting with everyone, which has never happened ever, at least since I’ve been in the office, and I’ve been here longer than anyone else now, so we thought something really big was happening or something. President shared with us many things he had learned about mission organization from Elder Foster and thoughts he had of some changes which could be implemented. It was so very interesting and I felt privileged to be part of this special meeting.
Since then, really since the beginning of this week, we have been having great things happening in our area, all of our past investigators have just kind of petered out, including Laura’s family, who we still visit every once in a while, but they aren’t really progressing at all, it is so hard to not try and just teach them more and more though, because of how close we have got to them and how much they have come to mean to us, but the more we get out in our area the better things get and people literally are just coming out of nowhere. We had a man show up at the church and ask when we have church, so we got his number and just taught him yesterday for the first time and put a baptismal date with him. He has a family too that we haven’t met yet we are hoping he will bring to church tomorrow, but if not we will meet them after. We have been getting into a lot of houses and finding receptive people, it is so interesting because I really felt like we have just contacted everywhere. I have been in this area longer than any of my other areas and now there are things just popping out I hadn’t seen before. It is awesome because we have really been struggling to get things going these last couple weeks. Yesterday it was 7:00pm and we only had one lesson and one new investigator, so we put a goal to both do ten contacts and finish the night with one more lesson and one more new investigator, at 9:05pm we both had done 14 contacts and hadn’t been received by a single person. So we were thinking about just going home and then I asked my companion to just contact this one last house, so we did and the lady came out and it started like she was just going turn out like all the other contacts we had done, but we started to solve some of her doubts and testify to her right there at the front gate and after about 5-10 minutes of talking and discussing things at the gate she let us in. We sat on her porch and taught her and two of her daughters, met her husband and had a great lesson and in the end we left them with 2 copies of the Book of Mormon and they seemed really excited to read. They can’t go to church tomorrow because they are traveling this weekend, but they said we could come back on Monday when they get back and they would go to church with us the next week. We have had so many things just like that happen to us lately, just miracle after miracle this last week, we even got into this super nice house, nicer than the average house in the states, with nice couches and a huge flat screen TV and everything, and taught a great lesson to a 16 year old guy that by the end of the lesson accepted an invitation to be baptized. Hopefully all the work can turn into people in church tomorrow, right now we should have one man in church for sure, and hopefully we can get a few more than that though.
So all in all it has been a great and really spiritually uplifting week, I hope everyone is doing great and everyone has a great Thanksgiving.
Oh, I almost forgot my biggest news, after that meeting with President on Thursday we broke out the Christmas decorations and went crazy, it was so much fun, and I even got to put the star on the tree, I pretty much did everything though, being the one that was the most eager and into doing it, but I had help, so we are all ready for Christmas here, only 5 more weeks! I love you all sooo much, Elder Adamson V
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Week 52 in Paraguay Change 9 Week 3
So it has been another great week here in Paraguay, we have really shifted into Christmas mode here in the office too, we actually just finished watching Mr. Kruger’s Christmas and right now as I am writing you we are listening to Bing Crosby’s Christmas music, the season is approaching!
As for the tree here, it still isn’t up, I was so close to getting it up on Thursday so we would put it up the same day. I explained everything to President and his wife about how the family always puts up the Christmas tree on Veteran’s day and Sister Madariaga got really excited, I went with her and Elder Morrill to the Centro of Asunción and went Christmas shopping and everything to have it all ready on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday we were talking about where we were going to put the tree in the office and everything and I guess President didn’t realize when we would be putting up the tree or something and he wasn’t very excited about it because we have a General Authority coming next week for our zone conferences. The general authority is Elder Foster, he’s the second counselor in the Area Presidency here. Wednesday night Sister Madariaga called me and asked me if it would be okay to wait until he leaves to put up Christmas decorations and put up some Thanksgiving decorations instead, so of course I told her it was fine, though I was kind of sad about it. Now we have some Thanksgiving decorations up in the office, but next Thursday it is all going up, so I don’t have to wait too long. I realized today too that I still have the Christmas tree you sent me from last year so tonight when we get back to the house I’m going to set that one up on my desk at home. So anyway, we are all getting really excited for Christmas to come, it is going to be a really fun Christmas too because it falls on our P-day, which mean Christmas Eve falls on P-day Eve, which sometimes is just as great or better than P-day, so we’ll get to call our families, play games, go out to eat where ever we want, and just relax for a while on Christmas, and then the next week New Year is also on P-day, and New Year’s Eve on P-day Eve. So the point is there are a lot of really cool things happening in the near future, but to be completely honest this last week was pretty uneventful.
The only real interesting thing we have been doing is listening to John Bytheway talks. Elder Payne’s birthday was on Wednesday and he got a whole pack of John Bytheway on CD and we have been listening to it in the office, in the car, at home, everywhere. They actually are really good and they have a lot of interesting facts. He gives this one talk called “No Brainers” where he talks about the Commandments and how they really are no-brainers when we learn about the consequences that come from them. It was really cool to talk about because it covered all of Lesson 4 out of Preach My Gospel and gave a lot of explanation of consequences and blessing of the commandments, more specifically focused on the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity.... He did a very good job with the way that he presented the consequences and it was a very interesting and enjoyable talk. An interesting statistic that we heard today, the average household in the US, in 2003 when the talk was given, had the TV on in their house 7 ½ hours a day, and according to a study done, every 10 years the allowed use of profanity on the networks CBS, NBC, and FOX doubled and was projected to be at 17 times per hour by the year 2006. It is kind of crazy the world we live in sometimes. Anyway, I don’t know where I was going to go with those statistics, they were just interesting.
Something else I noticed today, I don’t know why this happens, but while we were playing soccer today, I noticed that if I’m playing soccer but I’m not trying very hard and I lose I don’t really care very much, but if I’m playing all out as hard as I can and I still lose, I get really upset, I don’t know why, and I tried to apply it to some gospel principles, so I’ll try to express the best I can what I was thinking this morning. I was thinking that if we are doing the very best we can, we should feel good no matter what the outcome, but really honestly I have been noticing, mostly in soccer, but I can kind of apply it to other things too, that when I do the best I can and I fail, I get really upset, and this is what I came up with. Most of the time I get upset it is because I feel like I was doing it all alone, and the thing I was trying to accomplish I couldn’t do on my own, first the soccer application, I start trying as hard as I can, and maybe the other members on the team aren’t trying very hard, they don’t care as much about the outcome, so I just start trying to defend 3 people at once and dribble all the way down and score, which works sometimes, but not as many times as it doesn’t, and I start to get frustrated and upset because I am trying to do something by myself that physically can’t be done without the help of someone else, my teammates. So now, the spiritual application, I feel like sometimes we get a little caught up on the end that we have in mind and we forget to seek the divine intervention we need to complete certain tasks, taking them all on our own and failing. Even though we are trying the best we can we just can’t overcome habits, or finish projects, or complete with worthy goals, and so we get frustrated and upset, but the only real reason we failed in the first place is because we left out our key teammate, our eternal friend, who is Jesus Christ. Anyway, just a cool little thought I thought of today, I’ll try to apply it a little to not get as frustrated when I lose soccer games, and hopefully it can help a few of you also, who knows.
I’m really looking forward to Christmas and talking to everyone again, I love you all soooo much, Elder Adamson V
PS If you can figure out a way to send eggnog, please send some, love you!
As for the tree here, it still isn’t up, I was so close to getting it up on Thursday so we would put it up the same day. I explained everything to President and his wife about how the family always puts up the Christmas tree on Veteran’s day and Sister Madariaga got really excited, I went with her and Elder Morrill to the Centro of Asunción and went Christmas shopping and everything to have it all ready on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday we were talking about where we were going to put the tree in the office and everything and I guess President didn’t realize when we would be putting up the tree or something and he wasn’t very excited about it because we have a General Authority coming next week for our zone conferences. The general authority is Elder Foster, he’s the second counselor in the Area Presidency here. Wednesday night Sister Madariaga called me and asked me if it would be okay to wait until he leaves to put up Christmas decorations and put up some Thanksgiving decorations instead, so of course I told her it was fine, though I was kind of sad about it. Now we have some Thanksgiving decorations up in the office, but next Thursday it is all going up, so I don’t have to wait too long. I realized today too that I still have the Christmas tree you sent me from last year so tonight when we get back to the house I’m going to set that one up on my desk at home. So anyway, we are all getting really excited for Christmas to come, it is going to be a really fun Christmas too because it falls on our P-day, which mean Christmas Eve falls on P-day Eve, which sometimes is just as great or better than P-day, so we’ll get to call our families, play games, go out to eat where ever we want, and just relax for a while on Christmas, and then the next week New Year is also on P-day, and New Year’s Eve on P-day Eve. So the point is there are a lot of really cool things happening in the near future, but to be completely honest this last week was pretty uneventful.
The only real interesting thing we have been doing is listening to John Bytheway talks. Elder Payne’s birthday was on Wednesday and he got a whole pack of John Bytheway on CD and we have been listening to it in the office, in the car, at home, everywhere. They actually are really good and they have a lot of interesting facts. He gives this one talk called “No Brainers” where he talks about the Commandments and how they really are no-brainers when we learn about the consequences that come from them. It was really cool to talk about because it covered all of Lesson 4 out of Preach My Gospel and gave a lot of explanation of consequences and blessing of the commandments, more specifically focused on the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity.... He did a very good job with the way that he presented the consequences and it was a very interesting and enjoyable talk. An interesting statistic that we heard today, the average household in the US, in 2003 when the talk was given, had the TV on in their house 7 ½ hours a day, and according to a study done, every 10 years the allowed use of profanity on the networks CBS, NBC, and FOX doubled and was projected to be at 17 times per hour by the year 2006. It is kind of crazy the world we live in sometimes. Anyway, I don’t know where I was going to go with those statistics, they were just interesting.
Something else I noticed today, I don’t know why this happens, but while we were playing soccer today, I noticed that if I’m playing soccer but I’m not trying very hard and I lose I don’t really care very much, but if I’m playing all out as hard as I can and I still lose, I get really upset, I don’t know why, and I tried to apply it to some gospel principles, so I’ll try to express the best I can what I was thinking this morning. I was thinking that if we are doing the very best we can, we should feel good no matter what the outcome, but really honestly I have been noticing, mostly in soccer, but I can kind of apply it to other things too, that when I do the best I can and I fail, I get really upset, and this is what I came up with. Most of the time I get upset it is because I feel like I was doing it all alone, and the thing I was trying to accomplish I couldn’t do on my own, first the soccer application, I start trying as hard as I can, and maybe the other members on the team aren’t trying very hard, they don’t care as much about the outcome, so I just start trying to defend 3 people at once and dribble all the way down and score, which works sometimes, but not as many times as it doesn’t, and I start to get frustrated and upset because I am trying to do something by myself that physically can’t be done without the help of someone else, my teammates. So now, the spiritual application, I feel like sometimes we get a little caught up on the end that we have in mind and we forget to seek the divine intervention we need to complete certain tasks, taking them all on our own and failing. Even though we are trying the best we can we just can’t overcome habits, or finish projects, or complete with worthy goals, and so we get frustrated and upset, but the only real reason we failed in the first place is because we left out our key teammate, our eternal friend, who is Jesus Christ. Anyway, just a cool little thought I thought of today, I’ll try to apply it a little to not get as frustrated when I lose soccer games, and hopefully it can help a few of you also, who knows.
I’m really looking forward to Christmas and talking to everyone again, I love you all soooo much, Elder Adamson V
PS If you can figure out a way to send eggnog, please send some, love you!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Week 51 in Paraguay Change 9 Week 2
So today was the first real relaxed P-day I have had in a long time, and I think my phone only rang about twice today, so that is really nice. Today was a great day, we started off with our studies like normal and then at 10am we went to Cocodrilo, this gym we have memberships at. I don’t know if I had mentioned that before. There is this nice gym really close to our house here so we asked our President if we could start going there and he said yes. It is so nice, we go every morning at
6:00am and workout, lifting and stuff, until 6:30am, then we go upstairs to this soccer gym they have and play soccer until 7:00am when we have to go home. It has gotten me in really good shape, hopefully I won’t lose it all again once I get back out into the field. So today, we went to the gym at 10am and played soccer solid until about 1:30pm, it was awesome, really tiring but awesome. It has been so much fun being able to play soccer so much here, I think I’m getting better too. I guess we’ll really see that one once I get home. Anyway, after that we went home, all took showers, and then took a nice little nap until about 3:00pm, got ready to leave and ate lunch and now we are just kind of finishing off the day with emails and things in the office. The Assistants have a baptism today, so they are steady working on that, the rest of us are at the computers. Anyway, work this week has been really hard, we had another sick Elder in the office so one of us had to stay with him all week, so we were pretty much working 3 areas with 2 companionships, and to make it worse those 3 areas used to be 4 areas, but one was just recently closed. Our areas are a lot bigger now, on top of that Elder Payne had to send in all the baptismal records for October 2 days earlier than usual, so we were in the office pretty late all week to begin with, so the area hasn’t really even seen too much of missionaries lately. We found this really great new investigator last Sunday too, and I really wanted to be able to meet with her this week, but we haven’t been able to stop by her house when she was home and she hasn’t picked up the phone the few times I’ve tried to call. Hopefully we can get a hold of her today and maybe by some miracle she will get to church tomorrow. Things with Laura’s family haven’t been too great lately either, the last time we went over there we were trying to figure a lot of things out, I really just wanted to get a feeling for where they were at spiritually with prayer and receiving answers, and then she told us she doesn’t think Joseph Smith could have been a true prophet because of what happened with polygamy. She always tells us that she goes on the internet to learn more about the church, but as much as it had sounded she was only going to Mormon.org to get information, but it really sounded like she got a hold of some anti literature or something. It has really caused me though to look a whole lot into the subject, I had no idea how much of it was explained in Doctrine and Covenants, and it has actually strengthened my testimony a lot about the subject studying about it and why it had to happen, today I did a study pretty much to answer the questions that she has about it all, I mean I was able to answer them with her, but I felt really bad about it because I didn’t have anything in scripture to back me up, so I studied a lot about it today and found some really good things I think might help her. I really think there is something a little more than that behind it all though, she doesn’t believe in the apostasy, she can’t believe the fact that no one had the authority for such a long time if the apostles left and passed on the authority to baptize to people, she is kind of offended by the whole temple ceremony and how we make covenants we can’t talk about, she always says that if Jesus loves us so much, why would the covenants be such a secret, but the amazing part behind all of it is that she is constantly reading and praying to know if it is true. She has read almost the whole Book of Mormon, parts of the Doctrine and Covenants, all of Our Heritage, most of the teachings of the prophet Wilford Woodruff, and a lot of the teachings of the prophet Spencer W Kimball, and she tells us every day she is praying to know if the things they say are true, but she kind of already can’t believe that they are. Fatima has been doing better, she told us the other day that she thought the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but that was before the whole polygamy lesson happened, hopefully that didn’t shake her at all, but she tells us she just doesn’t feel the need to be baptized yet. It is really nice to teach them because they really understand what we are teaching, but they just can’t say yet they know it’s true. I think we have basically decided that we are just going to go over there to teach and help Laura stay active for a while, and really focus on her instead of getting the rest baptized, and hopefully she will be able to help the rest of the family that’s not there. Anyway that is about it for now, we are going to have to leave now, I love you all so much! Thank you for all the emails, love you tons, Elder Adamson V
6:00am and workout, lifting and stuff, until 6:30am, then we go upstairs to this soccer gym they have and play soccer until 7:00am when we have to go home. It has gotten me in really good shape, hopefully I won’t lose it all again once I get back out into the field. So today, we went to the gym at 10am and played soccer solid until about 1:30pm, it was awesome, really tiring but awesome. It has been so much fun being able to play soccer so much here, I think I’m getting better too. I guess we’ll really see that one once I get home. Anyway, after that we went home, all took showers, and then took a nice little nap until about 3:00pm, got ready to leave and ate lunch and now we are just kind of finishing off the day with emails and things in the office. The Assistants have a baptism today, so they are steady working on that, the rest of us are at the computers. Anyway, work this week has been really hard, we had another sick Elder in the office so one of us had to stay with him all week, so we were pretty much working 3 areas with 2 companionships, and to make it worse those 3 areas used to be 4 areas, but one was just recently closed. Our areas are a lot bigger now, on top of that Elder Payne had to send in all the baptismal records for October 2 days earlier than usual, so we were in the office pretty late all week to begin with, so the area hasn’t really even seen too much of missionaries lately. We found this really great new investigator last Sunday too, and I really wanted to be able to meet with her this week, but we haven’t been able to stop by her house when she was home and she hasn’t picked up the phone the few times I’ve tried to call. Hopefully we can get a hold of her today and maybe by some miracle she will get to church tomorrow. Things with Laura’s family haven’t been too great lately either, the last time we went over there we were trying to figure a lot of things out, I really just wanted to get a feeling for where they were at spiritually with prayer and receiving answers, and then she told us she doesn’t think Joseph Smith could have been a true prophet because of what happened with polygamy. She always tells us that she goes on the internet to learn more about the church, but as much as it had sounded she was only going to Mormon.org to get information, but it really sounded like she got a hold of some anti literature or something. It has really caused me though to look a whole lot into the subject, I had no idea how much of it was explained in Doctrine and Covenants, and it has actually strengthened my testimony a lot about the subject studying about it and why it had to happen, today I did a study pretty much to answer the questions that she has about it all, I mean I was able to answer them with her, but I felt really bad about it because I didn’t have anything in scripture to back me up, so I studied a lot about it today and found some really good things I think might help her. I really think there is something a little more than that behind it all though, she doesn’t believe in the apostasy, she can’t believe the fact that no one had the authority for such a long time if the apostles left and passed on the authority to baptize to people, she is kind of offended by the whole temple ceremony and how we make covenants we can’t talk about, she always says that if Jesus loves us so much, why would the covenants be such a secret, but the amazing part behind all of it is that she is constantly reading and praying to know if it is true. She has read almost the whole Book of Mormon, parts of the Doctrine and Covenants, all of Our Heritage, most of the teachings of the prophet Wilford Woodruff, and a lot of the teachings of the prophet Spencer W Kimball, and she tells us every day she is praying to know if the things they say are true, but she kind of already can’t believe that they are. Fatima has been doing better, she told us the other day that she thought the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but that was before the whole polygamy lesson happened, hopefully that didn’t shake her at all, but she tells us she just doesn’t feel the need to be baptized yet. It is really nice to teach them because they really understand what we are teaching, but they just can’t say yet they know it’s true. I think we have basically decided that we are just going to go over there to teach and help Laura stay active for a while, and really focus on her instead of getting the rest baptized, and hopefully she will be able to help the rest of the family that’s not there. Anyway that is about it for now, we are going to have to leave now, I love you all so much! Thank you for all the emails, love you tons, Elder Adamson V
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