Hey Fam!
Thanks for all the birthday letters and pictures and
packages! It was great! This last week was awesome. We didn't have very many
meetings so we were able to go on a couple exchanges with zl's and it went
great. Our first exchange was in downtown Memphis and that where my homegurl
Latrice lives. She is Elder Boyers recent convert. Mom she said she is friends
with you on facebook. ha ha thats awesome. Our next exchange was in Pine Bluff
with the elders there. We also went to some Sketchy areas on my
mission this last week. So you know thats a good week!
We also went to the
Branch on Mountain view on sunday with President for sacrament meeting on
sunday. He is doing this thing where he wants to go with us to all the outlying
wards and branches on the mission on sundays so they dont feel out of sight and
out of mind. The branch president at mountain view and his wife went to EA for
school so it was cool to talk to them.
Basically, I don't have a lot of cool
things to say this week but i do have 1 "call to repentance"
experience I would like to share. Me and Armstrong were in a apartment complex
saturday night teaching one of our investigators and this girl walked up. She
was drinking a beer and was a little drunk, but she was just saying the crudest
things and not exactly inviting the spirit into the lesson. So at the end of it
all, we were about to leave and then she said "yall to good to pray
with me." I thought she was just trying to be all contentious and what not
but we told her we would pray with her. Armstrong started to say it and all of
the sudden she interrupted and said "Hold on, I know yall are Jesus people,
so could you pray for me that I will be able to get a job. Because my 3 kids
are in foster care and the only way I can get them back is if i get a job, and
all I want is my family back again." That took us off guard. So we prayed
for that and at the end she was crying and she said "thanks I needed
that." Man I felt like the lowest piece of dirt there. I thought this lady
was just all about herself but I realized the reason she was doing things like
drinking was just to numb the pain of what she has to deal with everyday.
President Monson said "We must develop the capacity to see people not as
they are right now, but as they can become." President Petersen always
told us "Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is, but treat a man
as he should be and ought to be and he will become what he should be and ought
to be." I feel like thats a lesson I have been learning over and over
again on my mission. Its amazing to see how people and the world look as we try
to see with our spiritual eyes. Thanks for everything yall do for me!
