This
week started out pretty slow, as far as reaching our weekly goals for
lessons taught, but luckily hit the ball out of the park as the week
went on! (baseball reference because today is opening day & I'm
slightly sad I'm not watching the Tigers play right this moment...)
Monday
we played kickball for our zone activity. It was pretty fun. I'm really
not very good, hence my knees getting scraped up. I was playing defense
on second base & Sister O was running from first. Elder F
had the ball & tried to throw it at her to get her out. Thinking he
was throwing it to me to tag her out, I stepped in the way of her
running & she plowed me over...a little blood & dirt never hurt
anyone, right? Yeah, it hurt a bit then & still hurts a week later,
but I'm fine! ;) We had dinner at the C's house where I got to
play guitar! It was awesome, but I'm a bit rusty haha
Tuesday
after district meeting & lunch we ventured off to find a referral
we got named L. She actually lives outside of our area, so we used
the GPS to find her address. This darn GPS that we borrowed from the
Wrightwood elders took us on some crazy roads that were definitely not
meant for cars or trucks, they were just paths for dirtbikes &
quads. An hour later, we didn't find where she lived, but we DID find a
snake! But it was time for dinner. We went over to the E's (ward
mission leader & wife). She always likes having us help her make
dinner & she teaches us in the process. This time we made chili
& cornbread. It was DELICIOUS!
Wednesday we decided to
find L! This time without the elders' GPS. And we found it! When
we got the referral, we got conflicting information. One said she
was a member, & one said she wasn't a member, so we didn't know.
Come to find out she is not a member. A guy that was over working on her
lawn who's a member in Redlands asked "if I sent missionaries to you,
would you talk to them?" So he sent us. & boy did she talk to us.
She asked so many questions about ALL different types of things. We
started reading the intro of the Book of Mormon with her & got a
couple paragraphs in & she veered the conversation off in a whole
different direction. We taught her gospel principles, but it was one of
the craziest "lessons" I've ever had. She wants us to do service for
her, so we set up an appointment to come back this week (in which we
invited the Wrightwood elders because technically she lives in their
area, we're hoping to pass her off to them...) & said a prayer with
her & left after being there for almost 2 hours.
From there we were
going down the road & had to turn around, so we turned around going
down a little dirt road right beside the main road. We saw a lady was
walking towards us down the same road, so we thought we'd say hi &
sorry for getting in her way. We rolled down the window & this lady
seemed really off, we asked how she was doing & she said that she
was really tired... not sure what was going on but she asked us if we
had water, so we gave her a bottle of water, & asked if there was
anything else we could do for her, she said "I don't think so..." but
there was definitely something else going on.. we told her to have a
good day & drove off. We drove for a couple minutes & I said
"man, I feel like we should've talked to her more." We both felt pretty
bad, so we decided to go to Burger King & get a hamburger &
fries & try to find her again. So we did. It was about 15 minutes
since we talked with her, & we found her on the same street as
before! We parked, got out of the car & walked closer to her. We
offered her the food but she said "no thanks" & walked away. It was
one of the strangest interactions with someone I've ever experienced,
& even though she denied the food & help, we both felt better
that we did all that we could. Our conscious was clear.
Thursday
was just a day of trying to find where people lived. We helped Sister
C out with Activity Days. The girls were learning about what to
write & what not to write to a missionary.
Friday
comes along & like I said earlier, we were slacking on our lessons
being taught. We had a weekly goal of 6 lessons with less actives, &
thus far we only had 1! We had a lesson with 3 less actives this day!
Wooo. And we had dinner at Brother & Sister B's house. Sister
B is half Thai; thus makes AMAZING Thai food! It reminded me of the
food Joey made. She made coconut curry with sticky rice, pad Thai & a
delicious coconut rice dessert with mangoes on top! She even gave us
left overs. :)
Saturday- CONFERENCE!
For
the morning session we went over to the A's home. (they're service
missionaries here; they are in charge of checking apts of us
missionaries). They fixed us breakfast. For the afternoon session we
went to the N's... In between the afternoon
session & priesthood we visited a less active who is 88 years old!
She's super sweet. Then we went to the H's to watch the Priesthood
session & Sister H fed us dinner too. The Priesthood session
was amazing. I loved Elder Ballard's talk about missionary work &
President Monson was HILARIOUS.
Sunday- Happy Easter!!
We
went over to the T's for breakfast & the morning session of
Conference. My favorite talk was by Elder Nielson where he talked about
the prodigal son, & his sister's story of how she became inactive,
& for 15 years her family loved her & supported her & tried
bringing her back to the church, & finally she did! I guess this
talk really hit me because that was one of the questions I had in mind going into
conference, and that was really an answer to my
prayers. Be patient & love those who've gone astray.
For the
afternoon session we went over to the A's again, & they
invited over their friend, C (who is a former investigator here). Besides the fact she fell asleep a few times during the session, I think
she liked it! hahaha we have an appointment with her this week, she
seems to be ready to learn again. She is VERY interesting though. She was asking us a ton of strange questions during
conference. Right after conference was over, we went over to a less
active family's house for dinner. We made foil dinners just like at
girl's camp! It was great. Then we visited the M's because we hadn't
seen them all week, but didn't have a lesson with them because we had to
go to the H's. They've had terrible luck lately with dogs. 3 have
died within the past week...they were super down & sad. We just sat
& talked with them for a while & had a really really great &
spiritual lesson with them about prayer. Brother H opened up a bit
about how he feels terrible about holding his family back from being
active in the church. (side note: they're really great people who have
great faith & testimonies, but have been offended a lot)
So
you probably didn't do the math, but at the end of the week we crushed
our goal of 6 lessons with less actives & got 8! Woooo!
I'm doing great here. Don't worry about me. I've been a missionary for 5 months, can you believe it? It's gone by so fast!
xoxo Sister Viraldo
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