Properly Placed Strokes

Hello!

This week was more successful I'm happy to say. Elder Peterson set a mission-long record for him self with 8 new investigators this week. I had a good week in Malatia, but if it weren't for that week, I would have set a record with new investigators too. Unfortunately, the trick is keeping the investigators you find. By the end of the week, all of them had dropped out except for our good investigator Violet and a 16 year old we picked up this week. We had actually seen him at church for the last few months, so everyone thought he was a member, but then we said something to the effect of "When were you baptized?" and he was like, "What?" So we picked him up and he agreed to a baptism date at the end of February. So if all works out, we should be having two baptisms at the end of this month :D My first two of my mission.

Anyways, a transfer happened this week but I'm not moving :) for once. Elder Seegmiller moved out of our district to Nork :( but now Elder Fairclough is training the new missionary, Elder Rackham! So that's a really cool experience for him. And it's kind of fun to have a new kid in our group and see how I once was. :p But yeah, that's way cool.

So we found out that the great new investigators that dropped us, that I was talking about last week, the ones who went to Russia, turns out they never went to Russia. We ran into her brother again and he said that they were still here. We called them and found out the truth. Apparently, their landlord says if they talk to us again, he'll kick them out, so that was a bummer to find out about.

So I learned a pretty cool life moral this week by chopping wood for one of our members. He's about 70 years old and has rheumatism and blood problems and all sorts of crazy other problems. I was out there chopping the wood, bringing down the axe way hard and feeling all manly about my self. I would cut through the wood in about two strikes, sometimes even after one it would go right through. Then our member said "Wait, hold on, hold on. Tsavd tanem (not really a direct translation to that, but it kind of meant, "goodness") You're hitting too hard." He then took the axe, and a fresh stump (you have to realize these stumps are huge) then brought the axe down and destroyed this stump straight down the center. Then went on to pulverize the entire thing. His strokes weren't even that powerful. At points he made it look like he was just cutting through butter, sometimes with only one hand. He then looked at us, then looked at the pile, then back at us, and said, "With the properly placed strokes, you use maybe half the energy." So it made me think what kind of stuff I was doing in life that could be considered improperly placed strokes. Stuff that gets the job done, but if done a different way would make things easier and more efficient. It was kind of funny though to see a man, who is a few times my age, show us both up.

This week we were standing on the street, talking to a 60 year old lady who was fond of pushing me in the chest every time she wanted to make a point, when I heard some sirens which sounded kind of weird to me. I looked and there were 2 military police cars escorting about 7 trucks full of troops going into the city. Needless to say I got distracted. I was brought back into reality by a shove from an impatient woman who wasn't happy that I wasn't listening to her... :p

On Sunday, our branch took the third hour talking about sacrament meeting and what they didn't like about what went on (it was kind of irreverent). They then went on to say how the translating by the missionaries was awful (we had to translate for a talk the senior missionaries were giving) and it was putting them to sleep. (Part of the irreverence was caused by an old lady in the front yelling "What are you saying?? I can't understand you!") Then they took the whole time talking about how much we were terrible at the language and should try focusing on the language of the spirit instead. I was translating that 3rd hour for a couple guys who were there from a business based in Utah, so I kind of watered it down for them saying "Well, they're kind of making fun of us right now..." :p Oh well, you do what you can, right?

I met a guy yesterday actually, who used to live in Santa Monica for 6 years! I was really excited. He was impressed because of my language because I had only been learning for a few months. He said he had been in America for 6 years and had only learned two words in English. :p I thought he should meet some of our members. I kind of got distracted talking about Santa Monica for a few minutes. We got his number though :) Hopefully going to pick him up as an investigator.

Fun fact, we may live in little America, but there are a couple things that remind you that Little America is still inside of just as Little Armenia. For example, if I want hot water for my shower, I have to turn on the sink to get the water pressure up high enough. :p But we're lucky though, because not all missionary apartments have hot water, so we're still blessed :)

So that's my week :) Love you!!

Elder Hammer