Week 75

uh....... ... mmm... I love being a missionary!!! its pretty awesome!

What a wonderful week, full of ups and downs, but mostly ups.  Things really start on Wednesday, tuesday was meetings most of the day, the meetings are in phoenix so a lot of our day is spent traveling.

Wednesday we were tracting and ran into a girl named Rose.  She was not very well dressed and had a lot of metal in her face, but we taught her anyway, she seemed embarrassed, but she said we could come back, so we set a time to come back.  We came back the next day, and she wasn't there, but her mom answered the door, and we talked to her mom.  Her husband is studying to be a pastor, but is currently... uhh... in jail... so no worries there, yet.  She has 3 kids, and we are going to be teaching them tomorrow!

I love being with Elder Davenport, we are getting so much done! We've been visiting potential investigators all week! in other words, people who missionaries in the past had been unable to teach for one reason or another, generally the reason being lack of effort.  Over the course of the week, we have set up appointments with 10 people! which is incredible.  since Elder Davenport got here we went from having 1 - 3 people to teach, to having hopefully by the end of this week having close to 25, not including the people we are going to meet this week.  One of the people was a former investigator named Nick.  He's awesome, we went and talked to him about the church, he said he felt the spirit very strong at a baptism one time, and at church, but wasn't sure if it was true.  We explained that was the spirit telling him it was true, and testified of many other things, the spirit was very strong.  He told us that the reason he stopped meeting with the missionaries is because one of them kept pestering him about baptism in a non-loving way "Soo... when you gettin' baptized man?" ugh, some missionaries just don't know how to be missionaries.  Anyway, we're excited to be teaching him.

Isay is infuriating! we gave him a gospel principles book to read, and he said it was the stupidest thing he's ever read.  He said the Book of Mormon is the best book ever, but everything in this other book was bologna and false.  I said there is nothing in that book that is not true.  he argued, so I said 'show me anything, and we'll talk about how its true.'  I've gotten to the point where I don't use tact with him anymore, I know him real well, and to be tactful doesn't work.  So he brought up the priesthood, and would say things like "The Book of Mormon and Bible don't teach about a priesthood, it just separates everyone." so I said "Do you want to go through this? I can show you where it talks about it in both books if you'd like." He didn't believe me, so we did it.  Then he changed subjects, and went to "graven images".  Ugh, it was the most frustrating lesson I've ever had!!!! I finally just said "Read Alma 13, we gotta go."

I've been playing basketball every morning for exercise, its a lot of fun and a great workout.  I'm so sore and tired though! but its good.  My knee is doing very good, but I worry that its just a missionary blessing and that as soon as I get home it will fail on me.

In the zone we went from 3 with a date for baptism, up to 9, and then mid week we had 16!! then it dropped back to 9.  Kind of a hard thing when it dropped, that was 7 people who said no after having set a date.  They should all still be baptized though.  We're going to be going through a lot of trials, or rather, we're going to encounter a lot of opposition, but we can overcome it as long as we put our faith in Jesus Christ who overcame all things.  I love this gospel! It's a gospel of excitement, its a gospel of truth! I love having the truth, and being able to feel that its true, not just know.

Elder Martin