The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Taketh Away

Hello!!!

So this week was definitely one to write home about...so to speak :)

If I were to title this, I would call it, The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Taketh Away

Now to explain:

Elder Peterson and I were pretty down after not having any investigators for a really long time. Our one that we had, Violet, promptly dropped us once Elder Peterson got here because, 'she had no time'.

After struggling for a while, we resigned ourselves to walking on the streets until we got investigators, either from walking, or from the members we were meeting with. One night, we were walking along and I decided to take the attitude of not worrying about the numbers. I changed my mindset and honestly just wanted to bring these people to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The results were pretty amazing. We left all our pamphlets with people (6) and gave both of our Book of Mormons away. It was getting late and I was anxious to get inside after a long day's hard work, when one kid, Vahe, about 19, stopped us on the street. He started asking the typical questions, and then went on to ask us if we had girls over at our place (he asked more than that but we'll keep this PG). Eventually we wiggled our way out of that one and left the last piece of church material we had with us with him, one Articles of Faith card with our names and number on it.

That night we got a call about 10:45. We let it go because it was late. The next morning, though, we called back and it was a man named Gor. He said he got our number from the streets, but neither of us remembered a Gor. But he said he wanted to meet, so we got his address and set up an appointment. When we went over to his house, both he and his wife listened intently. Then, Gor suddenly got up and said he wanted his relatives to hear what we had to say. So he left and brought back two men. One was his wife's sister's husband, and the other was Vahe! Apparently Vahe had given the card to his sister (Gor's wife) and she had given it to him. We extended baptismal invitations to all of them and they were way excited and said they'd be ready by the date we set. They even said next meeting they would bring over 3 or 4 other members of their family who wanted to listen. That night, Gor's brother called us and said he wanted to meet with us (separate from the 3 or 4 others who were going to come)

So we set appointments for all of them on one day, in the evening and morning. We called the day of to confirm the appointments and Gor said he had been wanting to call us. He then said he was moving to Russia for work...that day.

So we lost all of them. We tried calling back later to see if we could meet one more time, but he busied us every time. We then called his brother to see if he could meet. The conversation goes as such:

us: Hello
him: Hey
Us: This is the Elders, we wanted to know if you could still meet
Him: Who is this?
us: The Elders
Him: You dialed the wrong number
us: Oh, we called this number yesterday and it was Artur (his name)
Him: Ummm, wrong number
us: You aren't Artur?
Him: No
us: Who is this?
Him: (silence).....uhh.......Aiden.....

So that was not quite fun. Something must have scared them all away. But we can't do much about it now.  We then also found out that day that someone we were hoping to meet with ended up going Apostolic church and didn't want to speak to us again.

Oh well :)

On Sunday, though, Violet called us back after her having come to church. She said she wanted to meet with us again. She believed everything we said, and she wanted to do whatever she needed to do to be baptized. :) So maybe we just needed a test first. :)

Anyways, the rest of this week was neat. I found out during personal study that our ancestors are written about in Our Heritage :) I was just reading and I saw a story I thought was familiar about the John Hammer family. I matched it with the one in the family history written by great grandpa about the one blind horse, and it matched up! :) Fun fact.

There's a portion of the metro which goes outside. So I was sitting back watching the snow fall outside when I realized, the snow was falling inside the Metro as well. I looked up and there was snow flying in from little cracks all over :p These metros need to be replaced.

Our working with less-actives seems to be paying off. We got quite a few to come to church, including one, we figured out, who was having Word of Wisdom issues. :) So I don't feel too useless anymore. I think the results though are all coming from a desire to just help, instead of a desire to please the mission president with numbers. I guess it shows where the blessings come from :)

Anyways, I love you all!!!

Elder Hammer