Hello!
It has been an awesome week with some super awesome stories. One of my favorites happened 3 nights ago.
We were doing our best to go visit less active members in the ward using the ward list. It is pretty tough though because the ward list isn't updated at all. More often than not, we learn that the people we are looking for moved away long ago because the people who are currently living there, have lived there for at least a year. So usually it just turns into a good way to try and contact new people to teach.
Anyway, we went to a duplex type house where the addresses weren't very well marked. But we knew that it was one of the two houses. So, rather than spending a lot of time trying to figure out (in the dark) which one it was that we needed to knock on, I just picked one and knocked. And then, as the door got answered, I realized that I had forgotten the first name of the person we were looking for(only one person in the family, the father, was a member according to our records). So anyway, I just asked, "This is the Sanchez family, right?" When the girl who had answered the door responded "yes" I then explained to her that we are members of her Dad's church and that we were just stopping by to meet him. "Is he home right now?" I asked. She told us that Yes, he was home, but she didn't even know her Dad went to church. So I explained, "Yea, that's actually why we are looking for him. We have never met him. We are the new missionaries in the area and were hoping we could stop by to meet him tonight."
The conversation continued for a bit with her telling us how surprised she was that her Dad even has a church. Me asking if she had ever seen missionaries before. Her telling us she had never ever seen us before. Me being super shocked and asking her what she has been doing with her life for this to be her first time ever meeting missionaries. Oh it was fun. (all in English by the way) My goal was to help her realize that EVERYBODY knows who we are and so since she hasn't met us, and has no idea who we are or what we do, then maybe she should take the time to get on board with the rest of everyone else who does know about us.
It was definitely fun. But more importantly, she was very open to learn more. After all, she was the weird one who had no idea who missionaries are, and all we wanted to do was help her learn about something (who we are and what we do) that the rest of EVERYBODY else already knows at least a little bit about.
So she invited us into the living room while she went to go get her Dad. Her mom came back out with her and her mom was equally surprised to find out that we are members of her Husband's church. But very shortly we figured out what the problem was. Yes, we were in the home of a Sanchez family. But, the person we were actually looking for lives next door! And even though they have the same last name, they aren't even related. What an awesome coincidence!
And even better, even though we had screwed up on which house we got into, they told us they would love to have us come back sometime!
So Yes, I'm still forgetful. But if I wasn't, then I would have remembered the first name from the beginning and we would have never made it in the door!
Would it be too much of a stretch to say that my forgetfulness is a spiritual gift? ;)
Maybe.
Well, I'm out of time.
Love you,
Elder Ostler
