Awesome Investigators but Alone at Church (Week 42)

Hello everyone,

Beautiful Sky

Lovely Rainbow

One of the most disappointing parts of the week is just as sacrament meeting begins you realize the investigators and less-actives, who promised to be there didn't show up.  You keep checking the cell phone to see if they call or text you.  Hoping and praying with all your might that they are just running a bit late and will walk in soon.  You kept glancing at the doors behind you, but to no avail, nobody walks in.  You start to loose hope and even worry that the super solid investigator got in a car accident and is in the hospital.

Alfred (the miracle from last week) didn't come to church. :(  The above paragraph is a combination of what happened yesterday when Alfred didn't show up and also when previous investigators didn't show up.  It really is disappointing.

However, Alfred is still super awesome.  We meet with him Saturday morning.  He had read from the start of the Book of Mormon to 2 Nephi 28.  We showed him the Mormon Message: Origin.  Afterwards, he said it made him think of a verse, so he flips through the Book of Mormon to 1 Nephi 2 and reads a verse about prayer.  (Sorry, I don't remember which verse.)  He has really good comprehension and good questions.  He said he feels more peace in his life as he reads the Book of Mormon.  He also told us what if he feels he is ready for baptism, but we don't.  We explained there were things we need to teach him and things he needs to live by to be baptized, but if he wants to be baptized sooner, we would help him.  He can only meet with us on Saturday and Sunday, so we are going to meet with him twice both of those days, morning and night.  He also reads what we give him, so we don't have to cover it all -- but rather start with what he doesn't understand.  His questions make it clear that he is reading.  We met him on Saturday evening.  He really wanted to know everything that he has to do to be baptized, so we told him about the word of wisdom and the law of chastity.  He seemed a little bummed but was willing to live them.  We told him we would cover them in more detail later.  He told us Saturday night that his neighbor offered him some beer, and he said no.  Way to go, Alfred!

Our only communication with him is email, since he doesn't have a phone.  We wanted to check our email when he didn't show up to church, but the wifi at the church has been down for a few weeks.  He was so solid, so that is why we were worried something terrible happened.  Either he was in the hospital, or he was "anti-"ed really bad.  It turns out, when we connected to wifi later in the day, that he emailed us before church apologizing that he forgot he had something else he had to do.  He said he would come next week.  Alfred is so cool.  I am glad I get to work with him.

There was a rainstorm this week that lasted a long time, with tons of lighting.  We got stuck inside, since we are not supposed to be finding with lighting.  We watched the storm.  The picture is of the golf course we see from our back window.  It was fun to watch.  There was so much lighting.  The power went out for a hour or so.

Rainstorm

That night frogs came out, because of the puddles.  They woke us up in the middle of the night.  I couldn't get back to sleep.  I kept praying that God would have the frogs go away, or he would let me fall asleep.  He answered my prayer, but not in the way I was expecting.  He told Sister Johnston "take up thy bed and walk."  So we grabbed our mattresses and took them to the study.  We had really good sleep that night.  We also discovered that the mattresses don't make noise; but our boxsprings do.  So we have taken the mattresses off the boxsprings every night now.  We have only taken them to the study once more when it also rained a lot. That way we skipped being woken up by the frogs.

Sleeping in the Study

Sister Johnston's tire went flat while we were biking to Essix.  It is all fixed now, but she ended up carrying her bike for two miles.  She was really sore afterwards.  She carried it, because she didn't want the tire and rim to be ruined.

Sister Johnston carrying her bike

Sister Johnston

We have discovered that, with Drugar, he doesn't like lessons, but he loves it when we come over.  We now read stories and play games with him.  All of it, of course, teaches him.  Yesterday, we had a game about tithing and fast offerings.  We gave each of them Mormon money (Mormon.org cards with numbers written on them) as their paychecks.  We them explained tithing, and they had to figure out how much tithing to pay.  We them gave them a tithing slip and helped them full it out.  They got to choose how much money to give for fast offerings.  They then gave the envelopes to Edmund, who was the bishop in the game, since he didn't join in with the lesson.  They had a lot of fun, and we gave them a jar to keep their tithing in.

Just so you all know, Sister Johnston had "adopted" Sister Taylor, since she was her first companion in the Florida Orlando Mission, so she counts as my "adoptive grandma." :)

Miracle:  We decided to go find one former investigator.  Pons was last taught about a year ago.  We got there, and we learned that he has read the Book of Mormon about three times a week this whole time.  Cool.  He said he was expecting the sisters to come back, but they never did.  He said he thinks they got transferred and, with his work schedule, it made it hard for them to catch him home.  It also turns out that the Spanish Elders were over there the night before us to visit Barnabas (Pons' dad).  We found out that it was Barnabas' niece, who lives in another Ward, who referred him to the missionaries.  Cool.  God is really working on this family at this time.  When we came back yesterday, we also started teaching Grundle (Pons' sister-in-law).  Some of her sons can only speak English.  Grundle wants to find a church for her children.  She said she plans on coming to church and bringing those she can.

✨Sister Aurora Pack