Letter #14

Our mission president tells us that we need to knock doors every day from 5:00-7:00 to find people, and that the best things always happen at 6:58, so we need to keep knocking during that entire time. Well the last 2 days in a row, we have been offered hamburgers at houses that we've run into at 6:58, so that's been working out for us lately. The funny thing is that it was the same group of people at two different houses each day. They asked us if we believed that black people were going to heaven, and I said yes, so that was good enough for them. I showed them 2 Nephi 26:33, because that came to mind when she asked. I got a hallelujah when I got to the "all are alike unto God" part. And then we had to explain the whole priesthood thing, because that's what they were thinking about when they asked the question. And then one of them said "Well, that wasn't just your church. That was the times. We don't blame you for that." And then we got food from them.

That soup kitchen thing didn't really work out. The preacher there was going to go all night, and let us go when he was done, and we didn't have all night, so we left after listening to him for like half an hour. That was a little weird. But it was mostly good stuff. We talked to some less actives there that had supposedly been baptized before and thought they might want to show up to church again sometime. One of them was even a fairly normal person that wasn't completely wrecked from past drug use. So he was pretty cool.

On Saturday, we had a baptism for a 10-year-old boy. Darius Corniciuc. For some reason, his last name has been written in our progress reports as Bell for about a year now, and that is not his last name at all. About a year ago, he told his less-active parents that he wanted to be baptized, and they told him that if he went to church for a year, and still wanted to be baptized after that, that he could do that, but they really just said that because they didn't think he would do it, but he did. It was a really nice baptism. His family all came out for it, and we had the ward mission leader and his wife, and the second councilor in the bishopric, so it was a pretty small turnout. But the mom started crying at the end, and the WML conveniently waited until after they had already taken pictures that they shouldn't do that. And Elder Burt gave the talk on baptism, and I taught the Restoration while Darius was getting dressed.

Elder Burt talked me into getting a gym pass at the YMCA we have just downtown. So now we're getting up at 5:45 every morning to go over and lift weights. And nothing makes you look like more of a fool than benching an empty bar. We put a 25 weight on each end this morning to make me feel better, but we always have to add about 100 pounds when Elder Burt goes to do a sets, and he says that's WAY less than normal for him. Also, I'm sore all over the place now. Haha, but this is probably good for me. Also, he has started doing insanity at night, so I might start doing that with him too, because I really prefer cardio to weight lifting. But it looks so hard, so I don't know yet.

Anyway, that's about all of the interesting things for this week, so I'm going to finish up this letter now. I love you all and miss you!