Dear Family,
We did what our mission called a Surge week, kind of like the Purge, at least that's what I wanted them to call it. Basically all meetings for the week were cancelled and unless we had lessons, which weren't too many this week for us, then it was constant finding, looking for new people to teach. Typically President Pratt wants us to do a minimum of fifteen hours of finding a week and this week everyone had to hit at least thirty. What hard work but the miracles that were shown throughout the mission this week were incredible. As a mission we found over a hundred new people to teach. Elder Wynder and I found three throughout the week, which is pretty great. Everyday there were different challenges like teaching short five minute Restoration lessons to as many people as would allow you to in the day or extend the baptismal invitation. It sure was a great way to motivate us more to be able to share the gospel with others in a fun and creative way. One of the challenges was to come up with a creative, effective contact. So this week we went down to the boardwalk and we tried what we called picture contacting. I held my camera and when we tried to talk to someone who turned us down right away, we would just ask them if they could take a picture for us. No one really declined doing that and what happened is it gave us a window of opportunity to talk with them while they took the picture, pretty effective, and we got a couple of good pictures out of it.
We served at a soup kitchen this week and put out a small stack of each of the pamphlets for the first three lessons. The fruits of that came on Sunday. We were sitting at the church when the doorbell rings, and we go to answer. An older gentleman was asking if our minister was here and wanted to talk to him about being baptized the proper way, saying that in his church they did it by sprinkling on the forehead. But he was reading a pamphlet that he picked up (the gospel of Jesus Christ) at the soup kitchen and read about baptism by immersion and felt that it was the right way, so he went looking, and what do you know, he runs into just the people he needs to talk to, the missionaries. We invited him in from standing out in the snow storm and only had about fifteen minutes before getting to another appointment. Quick lesson on baptism and authority! Miracles! We worked our tails off and prayed hard, and God placed Michael in our path to as he says, "Make sure he does it right so he can be saved." I know that this is God's work and that if we work hard, he can trust us.
We made a list of people who had met with missionaries before but stopped. But there was one where we had an address for it but we couldn't find the house. One day we were knocking near Bishop's house before dinner and ran into this guy named Raymond, sounded familiar to me. We talked for a bit and shared about the Book of Mormon and he said, "I only like studying from my Bible, it's a beautiful book, here I'll show you." Then he goes to a drawer and pulls out a large print copy of a triple combination, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. What! my eyed got so wide, it caught me off guard, thinking it was going to be some old looking Old Testament or something. He said he had another one that he kept in his car. We went back to follow up on a chapter we left him to read and he didn't understand a thing. He's not very comprehending and just agrees with whatever we say, even if he has no idea what's going on. Haha hopefully we can teach super simply and he can understand something, or maybe he just likes the company, who knows.
Had a lesson with this guy named Paul, who said we were welcome any time. Aaannddd, it turned out a little differently than I thought it was going to. We barely got to teach because he spent the whole time asking us questions, which I guess were good but a lot of it didn't pertain to anything. Nice guy though, gonna go back once more and see if we can teach anything this time, haha.
Transfers are this week and we just got our letters, the last time my name will be on it. :( I will be finishing my mission on... PEI. Yep I'm staying in Charlottetown with Elder Wynder and will be "dying" here, on the island, which is pretty sweet because I love this place. By the time I leave I will have spent almost eleven months, close to half, of my mission on this little Island, love it, will miss it hardcore, and the people here. You grow to love them, even if they are crazy! (I hope some of them read this)
Hope this week has been as awesome for you as it has for me!
Love You's!
Love Elder Ray
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| How many eggs and milk my comps and I have had over the last three months, we saved them up just to see. |
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| PEI street lights red=squares yellow=diamond green=circle |