Week 35

Tuesday: We had district meeting as usual, it went well. At night we helped out the young women to prepare to be missionaries before they are called on a mission. Their leaders asked if we would come by and help out so we did. It was interesting to see how they thought missionary work was so hard when really it should be easy sharing the gospel with our friends. We met a lady who is not of our faith but her husband is. The interesting thing is, that she goes to church every week with her kids and the husband who is a member does not. She wants to meet with us and join the church but she wants to wait till her husband is on board with it and comes to church. We got a call from a random number saying that she volunteers at a mentor works program (half way house for people who have addictions) and she said that their was a new move in from North Carolina and she has an aunt that is LDS and thinks highly of her and wants to meet with us!

Wednesday: The sisters in our district wanted us to make them a cool poster so they could put it up in their church buildings so we made them one. We had a lesson set up with a less active family with a kid who is 8, turning 9 this month. The bishop interviewed him to see if he knew enough to be baptized and he couldn't answer the basic questions so he told us we should teach him the lessons, so we started doing that and he is now on date for May 27th to be baptized. He will be 9 then so that's why we are teaching him. We stopped by a church to use the bathroom and the bishop of the 4th Ward was there so we talked a little about the Murrays and Logan wanting to be baptized on May 27th. We got on the same page and then bishop told us he is meeting with two people on Sunday and one is a family with a kid who isn't baptized and the other is with a women who he doesn't know, he said if their is missionary work he will let us know! We met the lady named Brandy, who is in the mentor works program. We have a meeting scheduled on Friday!

Thursday: We did service for brother Van Komen, he is a Dutch guy who is so funny and will be helping him every week in the afternoon! We had our meeting with one of our senior missionary couples the Reeds.  They are health nuts and they made us try this green drink they made from various fruits and vegetables..... let's just say it looked a lot worse than what it tasted like. Not bad but not good. We had a visit with Zack and Jaylee Peck talked a little bit about the Book of Mormon and followed up on how their camping trip was, and their trip to California. At night we went out with one of my favorite ward mission leaders  Brother Barron, and had some good visits.

Friday: We had our  lunch with our other senior missionary couple.  Brandy canceled the lesson because her meds got mixed up and she wasn't feeling really good. We did service for a man named Anthony who took his name off the church records, we did some yard work for him and he gave us some good beef jerky! It always nice to help someone in need. At night I did a baptismal interview for the Elders in my district (part of the responsibilities of a district leader) we will be going to Rubens baptism on Tuesday at 7am haha! That's the only time he was free so we're doing it then!

Saturday: We were trying to think of some good ways to teach Logan because he has high functioning autism and has a short attention span so we wanted to teach the restoration using cups, we made a pyramid with the apostles and Jesus as the head of the church, and after he died and his apostles as well, we fell into what is known as a great apostasy. Hence the need for a restoration with Joseph Smith. And just as times of old we have apostles and a prophet to lead and guide us, but it is still the church of Jesus Christ. It was a good lesson with Logan but his little sister kept knocking down all the cups before we could get them all up and was very determined that she needed to put them up. So eventually we got it to stand up. Well we were on our way to dinner and some guy pulled out of his driveway and floored it past us and I was fixing something on my bag and I hit the brakes and sadly it was the front break that I hit and I did a little front flip over my bike haha! I thought I wouldn't crash because every missionary talks about their crashes on their bikes haha. Just got a little scrape on my hand is all.

Sunday: We went to the 4th Ward to see if the Murray family would come to church and they did! We were a little worried that they didn't come, but they were out in the foyer. After sacrament meeting we went to go see if Zack and Jaylee came to church. Jaylee came but Zack didn't. We sat through the Sunday school with them and Primary. We need to figure out a way to get Zack excited to come to church so we are going to be teaching primary next week!

Hope you all have had a great week!

Love Elder Ashby