Also, the temperature is still bipolar here! It was really hot as we mowed a less active member's lawn! But then rains and pours as we try to door knock. The lawn mowing was good though, we got to talk with him for a bit after, and this guy has had a crazy life. He traveled the world for work, and has crazy stories of surviving massive river bores in the jungles, crazy helicopter rides, and much more. He even shared with us some of his mission stories, like getting held up by 14 "Filipino jungle ninjas with guns". No other way to describe them.
And as I mentioned earlier, and, as you can see in the title, we have received a lot of encouragement to focus our efforts on tracting and contacting people! So this past week we did quite a bit of door knocking, and got to have a lot of interesting experienceds from that. Some of the weirdest mission experiences come from door knocking! First off, we met Mark, who let us in right away. He was kind of an older man with long white hair, and a lot white beard, and didn't seem totally there, but apparently met with missionaries before. In his house were all these pictures and statues of catholic stuff and Jesus. He talked about how people have seen visions, how he's a strong catholic and reads lots of crazy books, how he thinks the pope is evil but catholocism is the truest religion, and how people were visited by Jesus telling them to paint pictures of him. I asked if we could share something from the book of Mormon, and he paused, said no real quick, then went right back on talking about his catholic statues and pictures. After escaping his house it was getting a bit late soe did some street contacting and ran into a guy sitting on a bench. We asked if we could give him a pamphlet since he looked a bit busy, but then he put down his papers, took off his glasses, looked up to us and said, "do you want to go to heaven?" - here we go. It ended up not being a bash though and just a friendly discussion about repentance and turning to Jesus. And his dog stealing his bacon? I have no idea how that story was relevant to what he was trying to teach us.
Over the next few days of door knocking we also met Fia from Thailand, who we taught a lesson to at the door and answered a lot of his questions! Somehow we ended up motivating him to try going to church for the first time (he's got a buddhist background), and then he said he'd give it a try and go to his Jehovah Witness girlfriend's church - I guess a church is better than no church at all right?
We also met Jody, a Seventh Day Adventist, and he let us in to talk about his missionary work, discuss gospel principles, and also how much he's changed his life. We also got to share a message with Steven, who also had a bit of a rough history but a pretty cool "conversion" story to Christ, and changed his life. He told us we really uplifted him and reminded him about how he needs to get back on track again, which was good.
I also had to give up my companion for a day and a half to go to an orientation thing, and got 2 temporary companions for that time, who were in the same situation as me. We had a blast, door knocking all day and talking about mission life and teasing one of them (who is going home in a month or two).
And more good news! We got a new car! Well, newer than the last one we had. Our zone leaders got the one of the newest cars on the mission, so they gave us their car, which was quite an upgrade from our other one, so I can't complain. Hello touchscreen radio controls, cruise control, reversing camera, and more! Thanks zone leaders if your reading this!
Anyways, thanks everyone for your love and support! Have a great week!
Elder Ho
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