Wednesday, May 9, 2012

May 7, 2012

Me and Elder Minquiz had a rough go this week. We didn't have any investigators at church this week. The family Montanyas had their interview this past week but it did not go to great. They are living the commandments but are now starting to express some doubts. The dad is a member of the Jehovah's witness and I think he is getting some flak from them. The son said he is not sure if it is right to leave his catholic faith. I said to him ¨but you don't even go to the catholic church and you said the times you went you didn't like it.¨ He still said he wasn't sure if he wanted to be baptized. Because of that my new goal is try and get the gift of discernment to try and resolve concerns. Resolving concerns can be pretty complex, Preach My Gospel describes it as a iceberg we only see part of it above water, they may have deeper concerns that we cant see. I hope we can fix what ever problem they have but its not looking to good. We have a new investigator named Alberto, he is 60 and use to live in San Diego for most of his life but got deported. He use to be a stained window glass maker but is out of work. We taught about the restoration and the gospel. This past week we taught him the word of wisdom. I was a bit worried about teaching that to him. The man smokes like a chimney. What makes us worried is that he also revealed that he has problems with coffee, alcohol, drugs, tea and tobacco. Right now our goal is to try and get one thing down at a time. He smokes 3 packs a day so we are trying to get him down to 1 and half. We want to slowly dwindle it down. He really wants to start changing though so I have high hopes. The only thing I think that would stop him is his wife. When we tried to visit him once she came out side and told us he wasn't home, 2 seconds later he walks out. She had a hard time looking us in the eye after that. We also have found a new investigator who is a seventh day Adventist, unlike most investigators he is familiar with gospel terms, at the end of our first lesson we tried to invite him to be baptized but he said he didn't need to because he had been baptised already in his church (this was after we explained priesthood authority). As a missionary you need to be careful not to get frustrated with people. I feel like I see everything clearly and its sad to me when people don't progress because of their spiritual blindness by things of the world. Church members really do have more of a eternal perspective while most people i teach have a ¨¨here in the now¨perspective, I feel that sometimes as missionaries our job is to try and stretch peoples minds more and get a new perspective. 
This week our new plan is to try and get more investigators by working through members. We have tried contacting and we are just not having the success needed. But I know that this week will be awesome. I just need to focus on the work.
Love Elder Micah Johnson

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