September 28, 2009

First off, I apologize for my understatement last week. I guess we've been having record rains and parts of Atlanta (the interstate on the west side being one of them) are flooding like crazy. Rest assured, we're safe here in Hall/Northern Gwinett county. It's kinda funny, the flooding seems to be mostly just outside our mission boundaries. Which is unfortunate, because we haven't been able to help with the clean-up. However I know that there were several hundred members from some of the surrounding stakes (Sugar Hill, which is mine, included). From what I hear the clean-up was not very well organized and our ward members only ran into one man who would absolutely not let 'Mormons' on his property...even to help him clean out his flooded house. The other interesting report is that there were a fair amount of Jehovah's Witnesses there too! I think that's great, in fact, the other day Elder Christensen and I shared a bathroom with a Jehovah's Witness, he was very nice and very friendly to us.

So.... on to this week's events. We had a very good week. We've identified several part-member families who we'll be trying to get in, serve and gain the trust of in the following week. We're hoping to get them back to church, or at least find a friend in the ward for them. No new investigators this week, but we're finding a lot of Potential Investigators. For some reason all of the Potential Investigators seem to be younger kids. I'm talking that with Part-member families and such there's like 4 or 5 11 year olds that we may have as investigators, it's kinda cool, I'm really learning how to teach simply. (Ask Jordan about John Taylor quote in Ch. 10 of PMG... I'm striving for "true intelligence" as my name-sake has defined it). One such 11 year old is from a Less-Active/Part-Member family. He was super super cold to us when we first met him and wouldn't even really come out and say a prayer with us. So we brought it up in District Meeting and the idea was suggested that we go over and have like a family home evening/game night! We suggested the idea to him and he was super excited, I have to make sure to buy UNO today, he really wanted it. Now the trick is to: 1) Get his mom and his brothers and sisters and HIM to church. 2) Get her to stop smoking and 3) Get the dad to be home so we can teach him too!

R***** S***** is the man who showed up to church on Sunday last week. We taught him about the Restoration of the Gospel. He accepted everything (I'm not completely sure how much he understood) and has even accepted to be baptized as he comes to know that these things are true! We tried to set a date for the second or third weekend in October but we ran into a catch. The lady/member who we thought was his wife is actually is fiance. So, they have to get married before we can actually baptize him and they're not planning on that until January! So we're hoping that either he'll have a spiritual experience at Conference that will convince him to move it up sooner OR he'll move out and live with his mother who's just down the street. Either way, it is in the Lord's hands and that's how it should be!

I really love this ward, and we're starting to get them more PMG and more involved. One great man in our ward has brought this man and his girlfriend to church!

PAUSE! I just had an incredible experience. So while I've been sitting here typing the guy right across from me has been staring at me. I figured, we'll he doesn't like Mormons and nothing's new. Well, he just came over, asked me what church I was from and asked me if we attend other churches. I told him "Of course we do" Well, he invited me to his church which is a United Methodist Church and I, knowing beforehand that he was going to at least ask me something, had pulled out an Article of Faith pass along card and handed it to him, he said he'd look for me at church. I'm super excited if it doesn't conflict with our time at all and it's a great Building Bridges experience. Something that we're stressing in the ward is to 'Build Bridges' we're reminding people that it's not about converting people, it's about inviting people. It doesn't matter if they come as long as you sincerely and thoughtfully pray and think of people that you can invite to any church function. Anyway, his name was Reverend Scott, he's retired now, and they have a woman pastor. They aren't meeting until Oct. 25th so I'll let you know on the 26th how it went. I'm excited... and a bit nervous.

Back to the story. This couple who's been coming to church has been going through some really rough times. He lost his job and they lost their house and they've been living out of a tent in the woods. Some guys from the ward have been finding odd-jobs around the house that they can pay him for doing. We're hoping that maybe we can teach him sometime this week. We'll see.

I love you all, just as I love Joshua's council to the children of Israel right before he passes away... "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." By the way did you know his father was a Nun? (Okay, so not really, but that was his name... pretty cool huh!)

With greatest love that binds my heartstrings,

Elder Taylor Davies