Wednesday: In the morning we ended our exchanges. After
the exchanges we had a lesson with Bruce Erickson. We really didn't get to
teach him anything because he wanted to get to know Elder Fitzgerald. At night
we decided to go contact a referral we received from a bishop. As we were
talking to Zach Thorum's grandfather at the door, Zach and his wife pulled up.
(They live with his grandpa) we ended up talking to him for a good hour am a
half, we figured out he has had some pretty pushy and crappy missionaries
before. He liked talking to us and connected to us pretty good. I knew a
handful of kids he has coached over at Herriman high school for football and
rugby. His wife is a member and we could tell she really wants him to be a
member and to be active. Even possibly sealed in the temple.
Thursday: During our personal study time in the morning,
Elder Fitzgerald fell asleep. He was out for awhile so I had a lot more time to
do personal study which was really nice. I took a picture of him sleeping as I
usually do. When he finally woke up he was telling me how his dream was almost
like am out of body experience and he felt like he was in inception. So I made
a funny story out of pictures of him sleeping. I did a reenactment of Lehi's
dream. (In the Book of Mormon 1 Nephi Chapter 8) when he woke up I showed him
and he thought it was the funniest thing! We received a church headquarter
referral for a person named Madison. It says she is going to church with the
smart family, and wants to be baptized. But there isn't any smart family in
their ward? So we looked at our stake directory and there are only two families
that the last name is Smart, and they don't have kids her age. So we will have
to just stop by her house and hope her (less active/ part member) parents will
allow us to teach her. We realized that we have a problem, Jaida Webster has a
younger sister who isn't baptized as well, and now since the YSA Elders are
teaching Jaida, we don't really want to be teaching the younger sister because
that would be really weird to have two different sets of missionaries teach
them. It kind of irritated me that they started teaching her and having her go
to the YSA Ward, because now it limits her sister to have a person to go to
church with and will be harder for her to have a desire to do so. So by them
teaching her it prevented/ limited the ability to reactivate the family, and
baptize the kids. I mean I know that Gods will was for the YSA Elders to
contact her but I just don't understand why that's the way this situation
happened. I guess I need to be like Nephi when Laman and Lemuel (people in the
Book of Mormon) are laughing and mocking Nephi because he was commanded of God
to build a ship, and he didn't know why he needed to, but that he just had to.
Friday: We received another church headquarter referral!
It is for a girl named Louya Hunt, the information said that, her husband is a
less active member, and that they attended a church service over the holiday
break and she had a lot of questions about the church. We stopped by, but
nobody was home. Later at night we stopped by Sister Lindhearts house, she
finished crochet hats for Elder Fitzgerald and I. Let's just say they weren't
what I was expecting but still pretty cool that she made them. I had a swoop
(Utah mascot) hat, and Elder Fitzgerald had a Kilo Ren mask. I'll just say his
was a lot better.
Saturday: We were planning on going to play basketball in
the morning for our exercise time, but when the alarm went off Elder Fitzgerald
and I came to the conclusion that it was too early and we needed to sleep more.
Well we both forgot to set another alarm.... I woke up around 9. After we both
got ready we had to do some studying. I had a really good experience reading
the Book of Mormon. 2 Nephi 9 was a really good chapter and gave me a better
understanding of the Atonement and what Jesus did for all of us. For Dinner we
are at the Mitchell home. After dinner they told us a little bit about their
neighbors who are from Iran and are big into families. We also learned that
Mahi Marzban, (someone we are working with, we are teaching her parents from
Iran English) knows the Serji family really well and she might be the key to
opening the door for us and teaching how families can be together forever. We
contacted Louya Hunt, we figured out that she is Chinese and her husband is
American. She had a lot of questions about things and we were there to answer
them. As she learned more about our faith, she started chastising her husband,
saying stuff like, "why aren't you doing these things? It's what your
religion believes." It was pretty funny to see that happen in that way. We
had her download the gospel library app that has all the scriptures. She can
even change the setting to have Chinese. She said she would read the Book of
Mormon but her husband kind of didn't want us to teach her so we didn't
schedule an appointment but they told us to come by in a few weeks.
Sunday: We started our day off by going to a stake PEC
meeting. We were informed that President Bishop (an assistant to the mission president) was going to be in our stake for the day.
After the Meeting, we went to a Ward council with him. We got three good people
that we should go visit and he was quite impressed. After the Ward council we
had another meeting in our other stake with the high councilor over missionary work,
as well as a stake president assistant. After that we headed back over to the
sacrament meeting in the Sandy East stake where president Bishop was. It was
fast and testimony meeting so Elder Fitzgerald and I went up and bore our
Testimonies. I talked about Gods will and plan for us, as well as enduring to
the end. And talked a little bit about my ACL story. I got a little emotional
because it has almost been two years since I tore my ACL (January 20th) and how
that impacted me and my life for the better. Elder Fitzgerald gave a good
testimony about how the Lord needs the people to help others and in a sense he
called the whole congregation to do missionary work. I loved it and really felt
the spirit as he was speaking. All in all it was a great sacrament meeting and
good day with President Bishop. I learned a lot from him.
Love you all,
Elder Ashby
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