My Stepdad and Fortnite
Yoooo everybody!!! This week’s email should be pretty short. Not a ton happened this week, so that means you guys should let me know whats going on at home 😁 (Please email me)
I met my stepdad this week. My parents are not divorced, that’s just the term that is used when you get a different trainer for your second transfer in training. His name is Elder Baker, he’s 20 years old and from Lehi, Utah. He’s goaded. I’m glad I got the lineup I got for my trainers.
This week was kinda slow because I was kinda showing Baker around yet also trying to figure out this area by myself. It’s definitely harder to navigate the area when I’m not following my trainer around like a lost puppy and actually having to kinda lead. We met all of the members that we could and they all already love him. I think they were scared of what they’d get when Bigelow left. We are already setting up youth activities for this next week and Baker had to give his first talk on the topic of tithing.
There wasn’t enough to break the week down by days so we only got highlights this week.
ALL OF THE DOGS HAVE SO MANY TICKS AND ITS NASSSSTTTTYYYYY. Like a dog will come up to you and you’re like awww you’re so nice (Mom do not worry I am really cautious with dogs. I will NOT get rabies) but then you look at them and like on their ears they’ll have legit like 20 baby ticks each ear and the people here do nothing to take them off ever. Like we were doing first contact with this one lady (I’ll get to her in a second) and she had this dog and looking at it made me wanna throw up. Like people have 5 dogs, don’t take care of them, and are annoyed at the fact that they have these nasty ahh dogs living with them.
So to kinda touch on that lady and also this other lady, one thing I realized is how some people can tell the truth of the words we are saying but have to tell themselves otherwise to, in a sense, keep the traditions of their fathers. Like her, she’s an Evangelicalist and she was agreeing physically and verbally with what we are saying but then she goes “but I go to the Evangelical church” or this other lady and her son. We are teaching them and she’s talking about how much she doesn’t like some stuff about the Catholic church, but after we drop some absolute TRUTH BOMBS that she says she agrees with but then she goes “but I’m Catholic”. The hardness of hearts and people stuck in their ways is genuinely amazing to me sometimes. Baker says sometimes it’s like throwing a tennis ball at a wall and hoping sometime it will stick and that’s so true.
One thing that is insane to me sometimes is how some of these missionaries treat baptism as like it’s not a big deal and people should be willing to be baptized after 1 lesson, so they will keep nagging people to be baptized and pressure them pretty much into saying yes. A perfect example of this is this one girl we found this week. Her name is Maria, she’s probably my age and has been taught by 2 sets of missionaries, all 4 of which are still serving in this mission so I won’t name names. Anyways she has read all of the packets that we have, read the entire Book of Mormon, gone to church multiple times including District Conference, but because of the frequency of times she’s been told she NEEDS to be baptized and how these missionaries would ask her each lesson to do so has driven her away from the church and the desire to be baptized. We talked to her for a while and she agreed to let us teach her only once a week and we would answer any questions she has and not just go through the lessons with her again.
So on a lighter note, at the last leadership conference, according to our ZLs our Mission President said that our Zone is the most connected zone in the mission. It’s honestly kinda easy to do so because our whole zone is just 1 district with 12 missionaries, but with transfers we have wanted to keep that going and have a lot of hype so we have been sending Fortnite audios in our group chat. For those that have 0 idea about what that means, for example, if we go to someone’s house and they are not there so we knock the neighbors house and teach them, we’ll send an audio being like “we saw someone go cellar house of Pleasant Park, but once we got their they rifted away, so we checked gas station and 1 pumped them in the head”. I know to many of you that still makes no sense but to (those who know) it makes the day and the zone fun.
So the girl that we baptized the weekend I got here left the branch’s group chat, didn’t show up to church, and posted on her story that she doesn’t believe God exists. We tried calling her last week but never responded, so yesterday we just sent her a text with a scripture and she just goes “I don’t think I can come back. Thank you for everything.” We asked my last comp about it and he said to just give her a bit and she’ll come back round.
We’ve been making watermelon slushies and they are soooo good. It is supposedly some old missionary’s recipe that has been passed down. We call it Flowberry Fizz (its from Fortnite) and drink it out of the carved out watermelon. I will put a picture of us drinking it during our nightly call w the zone. If you want the recipe you have to email me.
The last thing is the girl we had on date for baptism. She told us like a week and a half ago when we ran into her in the street that she thinks her parents want her to wait to be baptized until she’s a bit older. Well we talked to the parents and they are completely fine with it. We even got the signature from her parents to baptize her. Yesterday at church;however, our Branch President announced her baptism and she was like shocked😵😵 After sacrament she came up to us and said the same thing and was like “we should go and talk to my dad right now”. We left because there was no second hour due to elections happening, talked to the parents, and again they told us they were fine with it. We turn to her and like so you’re good? “Well I want to wait till I’m older” 😭😭😭😭Why didn’t you just tell us that in the first place??? Why did you lie and tell us it was your parents that wanted to wait?? We weren’t annoyed at the fact that she doesn’t feel ready to be baptised but the fact that she told us her parents wanted her to wait when it was her the whole time. So we’ll see if we have a baptism this week.
31/52 Cards, 2 Jokers
Spiritual Thought:
In the CCM we heard this old devotional by Elder Bednar about the “Character of Christ”. It was so so good and one of my favorites and I finally was able to relisten to it this week a bit during my personal study, and one thing he talked about didn’t hit me the first time and something I never noticed before when reading in Ether. He spoke on Ether 3:6
“6 And it came to pass that when the brother of Jared had said these words, behold, the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched the stones one by one with his finger. And the veil was taken from off the eyes of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord; and it was as the finger of a man, like unto flesh and blood; and the brother of Jared fell down before the Lord, for he was struck with fear”
He talked about how many people might think that the Brother of Jared saw the finger of the Lord touch every single stone, but that’s not what it says. It says that “the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched the stones one by one with his finger” and then the next sentence it says the veil was taken from the BoJ’s eyes, implying that he saw the stones light up one by one and then he saw the finger of the Lord. Elder Bednar talks about how each stone was a test of faith, as each stone lit without physically seeing the hand of the Lord, it was evidence of things not seen, and as the evidence built his pure knowledge grew, his faith was therefore strengthened unto the point of, as Bednar states, “The Lord cannot withhold himself, and the BoJ sees the finger of the Lord”. Bednar then says and quotes Ether 12:6 that “[the Brother of Jared] received his witness after the trial of his faith. If he saw the finger on the first stone, there would be no trial.”
This is so true in our lives! Oftentimes we have a question or a trial that we are wondering why it is happening to us, but if we keep looking forward and acting on the faith that we already have, we will find our answers, and we will see the hand of the Lord working in our lives to strengthen us. It won’t happen immediately, but one by one, day by day, line upon line… until eventually we have unwavering faith in Jesus Christ.
Another thing Bednar relates this story to is our investigators/friends/inactives. He says that the stones can represent the people we teach, and as we teach them, seeing the Light of Christ return to them, not only is their faith strengthened, but also our faith as we saw the hand of the Lord in their efforts to return and our efforts to help them return.
Above everything the mission is going so so well. Even when I have something to be annoyed at or a bad day/moment, the good always outweighs the bad 10 fold. I’m gonna say it again, PLEASE SEND ME EMAILS. I miss and love you all! Hope you all are doing well back home and in your missions!
– Élder Curtis
