Hello,
The weather is finally changing! We've got a
pretty good amount of rain lately which has also cooled things down. Last P-day
Elder Mintey and I went golfing with another companionship even though the winds
were probably 20 mph+ but it was still way fun. (actually I think the wind makes
it even more fun...) Elder Mintey raced NASCAR before his mission and so took a
picture next to his "racecar" as well.
Week three of whitewashing / district leader
was swell. We know the area pretty well now and can find our way around.
Jasmin's baptism was pushed back a week to this Saturday because her husband
Tyler (who is the competitive Pokemon battler) got worthy to baptize her but had
to work an all-day shift on the 21st. She's great though - we saw her at Walmart
today (she works as a manager at the customer service desk). It's funny to think
she and Tyler graduated in '11, and to see a bit of what life would have been
without a mission. It would have been weird.
We taught a 12 year old boy that was
adopted/is a foster child/ward of the state... his parents are active and he's
in a great family. We're working with him for a baptism date on October 19th -
he's been worked with previously but never worked out because he has slight
anger issues but lately he's been voluntarily coming to church. That's a big
step for him! We picked him up as a new investigator when I was on exchanges
with the Zone leaders, who had taught him in the past. They said he was doing
the best they've ever seen him so we're excited.
One of the ways Utah missions are interesting
is that new investigators are SO HARD to come by, but when you do pick one up
almost invariably they end up getting baptized 3-4 weeks later. The polarization
of people towards the church is crazy. Either they're super prepared or super
anti without much in-between, which makes for some crazy stories on both
ends.
Elder Chandler
---------------------------------
thought: for those who have been
offended...
The mission is still reading the Book of
Mormon together. Sometimes I don't like that they've kind of scheduled our
personal study for us by giving us these reading assignments each day. Either
way it's powerful.
We run into a lot of people that are turned
off towards the church or offended by the "stereotype Utah Mormons" -
judgmental, wont-let-kids-play-with-nonmembers, etc. All we can say is that's
not what the church is all about. This week one of the scriptures in our reading
was Helaman 3:33,
"...pride began to enter into the church - not
into the church of God, but into the hearts of the people that professed to
belong to the church of God".
The church is true even if people are not
always true to the church!... so we shouldn't go leaving it because of others
inside of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment