Hi Family,
Well things are going good. I would say that serving here in San Francisco is definitely one of the best experiences of my mission, but it has definitely also been the hardest. The toughest thing about the City is to keep your head up, and continue to move along - things can be discouraging. It is hard to be serving in a place where people disregard and disrespect the gospel so much. This is something that has really been on my mind, and has been bothering me for the past month or so, but it has been amazing to see the Lord answer the questions that I have line upon line. Part of the answer came when I was on 24 hour exchanges with the Assistants this past week, and Elder Ross came into my area. As we were having companionship study, he turned to a scripture in the Book of Mormon. It was in 3 Nephi 7:16-20. Elder Ross made a bold comment, before he read, he said "Hey, these people remind me of the people here in San Francisco". He read the scripture, and Nephi explained the people he was trying to teach. He said they had "hard hearts and blind minds". They were blind, fallen, and lost. The way that Nephi taught these people was he "testified boldly" and called them to repentance. He taught with so much power and authority, and had so much faith that the people could not disbelieve him. But instead of repenting and changing, they were angry with him! They were mad because of his power. Even though they believed that what he was teaching was true, they were still mad. As the Lords missionary, as a representative of Jesus Christ, I need to invite everyone boldly, and give them the clear choice. People have their agency, and they always will, but we are here to offer more, and simply invite. Yes they will get mad, and be angry, but I know that as I do my best to invite, we will find those who are being prepared.
So this week we dropped one of our investigators -Amy Linn. We have been teaching her since I've been here. She has been taught by missionaries for about 8 months now. She had a baptism date in June, but backed out of it. We have taught her everything several times. We had a lesson on the atonement and faith, then invited her to be baptized on Aug. 14. She said she would not, so we told her that she needs to continue to read and pray and come to church, but if she is not willing to keep commitments, or work towards a date, then there is really nothing else that we can do for her.
On the other hand, we had a second lesson with our new investigator that we found tracting, her name is Angelica. It was so good! She had never prayed before, so we had a whole lesson on the power of prayer, and we taught her how to pray. At the end of the lesson she said a prayer for the first time, and it was so good! I love it when investigators pray for the first time. We are excited to continue to met with her.
Michael is doing well. he really wants to learn, but read the BOM like we want him to. I think he gets out of the hospital this week. We are hopefully going to teach him tonight.
Rex is also doing great! He is still living with his girlfriend (she is a less active member), but she is moving to San Jose next week! Yay! We didn't even have to bring it up, she is just moving! Its good that they will not be living together, but we are going to miss Tracy. As we have taught Rex her testimony has really grown. We read Alma 32 with them last week, and after we finished she said, "I think that is were I went wrong. I never nourished the seed". The spirit really does let us know of the changes that we need to make in our lives, if we will just listen.
Well family, I love you very much! I loved the pictures that you sent me this week! The girls look sooooo grown up! Holy cow, Ally and Katie look almost like teenagers! Ok, maybe not that old, but they are growing up to be beautiful.
Love you!
-Elder Cook
Oh yes, and my toe is great!
No comments:
Post a Comment