Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Answers to Your Questions

Alright well to start out this week has been very good, we've had a lot of good stuff happening.  I guess I'll begin by answering your questions:
1.  How are your investigators doing?  Well unfortunately, most of our investigators have been dropped at the moment we really have very few people to be working with and it's been pretty hard on Elder Hulme and I, but that is alright.  We've just taken it as a message that we need to do more finding and that there is someone out there that Heavenly Father wants us to find and that he is preparing someone for us as long as we are willing to do the work and to be worthy of that gift.
 2. What ways are you finding people?  As we've been working to find that person we've been doing a lot of knocking doors, but that’s not all we've planned on doing.  As part of the plan we've made to find this prepared individual/family we've put aside one hour everyday to knock on doors and that was something that we both felt we needed to do because no one likes to knock on doors.  So we're going to push ourselves to do that and then after we've knocked for an hour at least, if we have free time, we're trying to work through the area list and meet all of the members here as well as find those less actives who might have gotten lost a little.  We've even found an active family who the missionaries stopped visiting for some reason and they've kinda been forgotten.  So that’s another thing we're doing and then we’re always looking for opportunities to constantly give service to those we see. 
 3.  What are you doing for your service hours?  Some of the things we do to serve people are as follows.  Every week we go to a senior center and feed them lunch and then afterwards we play a little pool with a few of the older fellows which is pretty fun.  They're even teaching me a good bit about how to play which is fun.  Aside from that we're constantly trying to look for those opportunities to help people whether it is to carry some groceries or their baby carriages up to their apartment and just trying to see opportunities to offer our assistance.  We always end each lesson by asking if there is anything we could do to help them before we go.  For me service is one of my favorite things to do, although most people here in New York don’t like to accept service it seems.  Most of them think there are some kinds of strings attached, which there are, but it's only us talking about the church and that doesn't cost them anything.  So yeah, we are trying to offer our service in that respect but nothing has come so far.
 4.  What spiritual experience did you have this week? As for spiritual experiences I'm not all that great at recognizing them and I'm really trying to get better at that right now.  The other day we had a day where not all that much was happening so we (having planned to knock for one hour a day) started looking for a building to knock in an area that we haven’t really worked in before and two buildings kinda stuck out in my mind.  I asked Elder Hulme what he thought and he just responded “which ever”, so I decided on the one that was closer because it would take less time and I didn’t want to walk the distance to the second building.  I would have though, if I had really felt impressed to go, but I felt equally good about both and so we went into the building that was right beside us and started knocking.  For the most part the building really wasn’t all that successful, we knocked the first three floors and had lots of no's and only one person that seemed alright, but didn't really have time for us.  Then we got to the second floor (cause we always start from the top and work our way down) and on the third door this man answered who at first didn't seem all that interested, but he let us into his house and we started talking to him and we found out that his wife had died a while back.  At this point we decided to teach him a plan of salvation lesson, which went really well.  One thing that I found out was that a while back he had been contacted by some missionaries and they never came over and he wasn't really sure why.  I know that the reason I had the impression to knock that house was so that we could knock on his door. It also proves me that the Lord can even work through someone’s laziness!  It was just a way good lesson.  So that’s my spiritual experience.  I really do think that I was guided by the spirit even though I wasn't really feeling super strong spiritual impressions which would be cool, but I've decided that I really need to focus on following the thoughts that come to my mind and that through said thoughts I can know what the Lord would have me do.
 5.  What funny experience did you have this week?  As for funny experiences this week I've got nothing.  It was a rather dull week in the way of funny experiences.  So for this week I got nothing.
 Anyways, I'm glad that everything is going well back home and I hope that you all have a great week.  I miss you and love you all.
 Love, Carson