August 5, 2013

Hello Family

This week has been slow. This week we did not have the car to drive. We spent our time biking and walking to appointments. Even though the week was slow we still visited many less active members.

Most weeks the ward signs up to feed us every day. Not this last week. The members fed us Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  A few days we had to cook our own food. We went to this pizza place on Friday next to our apartment called Glory Days Pizza.  There is a Member, Joanna Kubie, that works there and she gave us 50% off of our order and free drinks. Joanna is waiting on her mission call because she put her papers in last Tuesday.  On Sunday we went with Brother Reinch to help administer the Sacrament to an elderly sister.  After this visit he asked us who was feeding us. We told him nobody was. He took us to his house and fed us. His wife felt impressed that she need to cook a big meal for her family of 4 not knowing that the Elders did not have a dinner appointment after Fast Sunday.

This week Melody Mills our main investigator had to leave town because of a family death. She is still praying and reading the Book of Mormon even though there was a death in the family. She still has not come to church this last 5 weeks. She has gained a small testimony about how the Book of Mormon is a testimony of Jesus Christ.

Nathan did come to church this week, this was a surprised to us. This last week we had to tell him he could not go to scouts. Nathan is 21 but he looks like he is 15. His friend Kaleb was taking him to Scouts each Tuesday. We brought this topic up with bishop about him attending Scouts with his friend Kaleb.  The Bishop told us we need to tell him he was to old to attend because of his age.  He took this hard because his only friend is Kaleb.  We told him could go to the YSA activities.  We had Mikel come from the ward come and take him to the activity this last Saturday and become his friend. This helped Nathan have another friend at church.

This week biking and walking took up lots of our time.  The member that is the closest to our apartment is a mile away.  Most of the members that we visit are in Oakland and it is about 10 miles away. We can take the public Bus to Oakland but the bus doesn't run after 6 PM.  Friday there was an appointment a five so we took the bus and arrived in Oakland at 3 PM. The appointment went great with this less active family and we finished at 6pm.  Because the bus stopped for the night we decided to walk home. This was a long walk because distance we had to walk. It took us 3 hours to arrive at our apartment but we spent time at Glory days Pizza for dinner. That was a fun afternoon.

 This Saturday we need to go to the back side of the lake next to our house. We road our bikes around the lake to this neighborhood and we ran into a RLDS family. This Family let Elder Pack and I in. This family wanted to know what was different about the two churches. They do not believe in Brigham Young being a prophet and celestial Marriage and Baptisms for the dead.  They still believe in tithing and Book of Mormon.  We invited them to call us this next week and set up a time to watch the Prophet of the Restoration. They really seemed interested in this video about Joseph Smith and the church.

In the Topeka Zone, we had a missionary needing to be transfer to Garden City Kansas because of medical reason. This left a group of 3 missionary's covering 2 wards. One of the AP volunteered to come up and help this missionary. Elder Owens is not happy about this because he is stuck with this AP, Elder Straiten for 3 weeks. This week on Thursday my companion needs to go on splits with Elder Owens because he is the District leader. Every transfer the district leader goes to each area and sees how it is going. This leaves me with the AP.  It is going to be a fun having an AP as a companion for 24 hours.

Thanks For all The Letters and Emails

Love Elder Andrew Allen