Week 5 - Richland, Washington

This week was very similar to last week. We are doing a lot of searching … so we just talk to everyone we see. Most people don’t really want to hear what we have to say but we have found some people who are open to listening so we are hoping to start teaching them soon. We had dinner with a family last Monday and they brought their father who wasn't a member of the church. His wife had died recently so we shared a message about the temple and how he could be with his family for eternity and he seemed to really like hearing that. We found out later that after our message with him his daughter challenged him to get baptized in our church and he said yes to that - but he is leaving to go back to Florida next week so we won’t be able to teach him.  Hopefully he will follow through with his desire to be baptized. We have also been teaching a less active member of one of the wards and his girlfriend who is not in our ward boundaries.  They like the messages that we are sharing with them and they seem to be coming closer to Christ and that’s the whole goal. We also found a lady who lives next door to us who wants to go on a temple tour with her 95 year old mom.  We are really excited about that and we are hoping that we can start teaching her because she seems interested in what we believe in. This week we decided to walk up to an area where the missionaries before us hadn’t gone in quite a while and it took us around 45 minutes to walk up the hill and we found a person who said we could come back so that was good. We are going to try and go back up the hill after dinner one of these days so we can catch more people when they are home rather than when they are at work. We are going to start having firesides this week on Sunday and we are hoping the members will use that as a tool to help with their own missionary work.

I had my first exchange this week. I went out for the day with Elder Routabush and we worked really hard in his area for they day … just talking to everyone we saw. He is on his last transfer so he we will be heading home soon but it was good to go out with him and work.

Some of the things I have been working on this week are memorizing the first vision and James 1:5.  It’s gone really well and I think that I have both of those things memorized for now. Something else I have been working on is introducing baptism at the start of the lesson so that people aren't shocked when we invite them to baptism later. 

A typical day is ... 

-Waking up at 6:30

-Personal prayer

-Exercise for 30 minutes

-Make a protein shake for breakfast

-Shower, shave, brush my teeth and get ready for the day.

-Personal prayer to start personal study.

-Study for 1 hour 

-Pray to end personal study.

-Pray to start companion study.

-Study with my companion for 1 hour 

-Pray to end companion study.

-Pray to start training to train for 1 hour 

-Pray to end training.

-We go out and work for 1 hour then come back to the house for lunch.

-1 hour for lunch.

From 1 to 5 we are normally out knocking doors and then we have dinner with a member. They usually call on me to pray during dinner because I’m new and they think I have never prayed before … I think ;)

-After dinner we go back out to work and we stay out until 9.

-At 9 we go back to our house and pray to start daily planning.

-Then we pray to end daily planning and get ready for bed.

-We normally go to bed around 10.

That's a lot of praying!!!

In response to a few questions:

We eat breakfast and lunch at our house and dinner at member’s homes. I normally just have snacks for second dinner. We have plenty of time to go shopping on preparation days. There’s a place up here where you can get really nice ties for pretty cheap. Last week I bought 5 Calvin Klein ties for 30$ and that was nice. I also got a pair of joggers that were 10$ and they have a pretty cool pattern on them! We also have a really nice deal at Coast Vida or Subway. We get 60% off our entire order. Last week I got to quesadillas, a drink and chips and salsa for 8$ and that was nice

Scripture thought for the week:

1 Nephi 

9 And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the sun at noon-day.

10 And he also saw twelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament.

This is talking about the brightness or potential that Jesus and His apostles had when they came to the Earth. It made me think about what my own brightness was when I came to Earth and am I'm living up to that potential that I have?

My question to you is what do you think you own brightness or potential is? and are you doing everything you can to live up to that?

Elder Sugden