This week just cruised by. I feel like I was sitting here in the library two days ago. But I wasn't. It's been a whole week!
One of the funnest moments of the week was when we went to Zone Conference. During Zone Conference, President's AP's gave some finding training. It was great. They did a really good job. But the cool part was when they sent us out to contact people in the city for half an hour instead of having us do practice finding simulations with our companions acting as the "Potential Investigator"
Contacting people is something that Elder Ingram and I do pretty naturally well together. So when we left the chapel to fulfill the goal of at least 3 gospel conversations with one of those conversations leading to receiving an address, we were feeling pretty confident. That half an hour was some of the funnest contacting of my entire mission. I would like to think that the Lord was giving us an extra hard time just to watch the fun because when we got back to the church and swapped stories with the other missionaries, our experience didn't even compare. We had 6 or 7 great conversations with people but NONE of them decided they were interested in giving us their address as we parted ways (and we are normally pretty good at getting addresses). Additionally, we ran into all kinds of people that were doing their absolute best to avoid us (probably due to the fact that one of the other 30 companionships in somewhat near proximity had already talked to them)
We were having a great time as we laughed and came to the realization that our problem must be because all the other less than stellar contacting missionaries were scaring everybody away from our opportunities!
Even going into an upper end grocery store in search for something we were pretty sure wouldn't be there didn't win us an address. We had a pretty fun contact doing it though. The Mexican lady doing her shopping that we asked for help was blown away by the fact that we were speaking Spanish and even more blown away by the fact that we were looking for horchata drink mix! She wanted to know why the white guys were speaking Spanish, and why we were in search of Horchata! It was wonderful. Exactly as we had hoped for....or at least it was almost exactly what we had hoped for. Having her accept missionary visits would have been exactly what we were hoping for... but alas.
As we left the grocery store and started walking the several blocks back to the church where the meeting was, we were lucky enough to cross paths with a woman and her son who spoke Spanish. We explained our disappointment in not being able to find the horchata drink mix in the store we went to and she explained to us where another store would be that we could maybe find it at. But she then explained that she doesn't like to buy the mix because she can make it way better. She encouraged us to make it ourselves. She even went as far as to explain to us how to do it. We thanked her and as we bridged over to the who we are and what we do, we could see that while she was a wonderfully nice person, she was very not interested. As I realized this, I just stopped the conversation (which wasn't on track to get us to our needed address) with an Ah-Ha moment. "Oh no! Apenas me di cuenta que no vamos poder hacer la horchata. Nosotros nunca hemos sido muy buenos en la cocina!" And this was where Elder Ingram and myself threw ourselves under the bus for the greater cause. We explained that we would surely mess it up if we tried to do it on our own and bore testimony to our surety of this by telling her about all the other things we have messed up in the Kitchen. She thought we were pretty funny. We then hinted at the need for a horchata drink maker teacher as we invited ourselves over to her house and told her that we would return the favor of teaching us how to make our favorite drink by sharing a wonderful message with her about Jesus Christ. Our excitement at the idea of finally learning how to make horchata from scratch I'm sure caused her to feel a little bit obligated...after all, she would have been heartless to have told us that she wasn't willing to teach us. So she gave us an address which I'd like to think was really hers. However truthfully, I'll never know because we had to send it in as a referral since it was out of our area. But anyways, that was just a ton of fun! It was also fun sending the description for the referral. Oh how fun it would be to be one of the missionaries who received that referral.
Just so you know, Elder Ingram mentioned that it would be fun to get some vitamins for Christmas from my mom so he could try them out. I told him I'd see if I could put in a good word for him.
Also, 5ish new pair of garments for Christmas is another idea that I had for myself.
Hmmm. Well, I took a lot of time explaining about that fun contacting day so I am pretty short on time now. Let's see....
La Familia Loera is doing wonderful! Mom is still looking for a way to come to church on Sundays, but we know that this miracle is right around the corner. The kids came to a baptism with us this past weekend and they loved it! They just absorb everything like sponges. Another missionary at the baptism pointed out to the kids where the words were written on a sign in the baptismal font so that the person performing the baptism could read it and not mess it up. The thought in my head was, "That's cool information to share and all, but there has to be a cooler way to explain that...or at least a more positive way to explain it." I started brainstorming how I could make it sound more positive without offending the missionary who had just been trying to help out. But then the kids put the biggest smile on my face when they read over the words and proclaimed, "Hey! That is how Jesus told Nephi to baptize when he came to give Nephi the power to baptize! WOW!" They are just the best investigators ever. Elder Ingram and I are praying and working to find more families just like them.
Well,
That's it for now!
Love you All!
Elder Ostler
