Hey everybody! It's been an exciting week for us in the PPM and missionaries everywhere. If you read weekly emails you're bound to hear about it somewhere but basically we're going to be more focused on the most important things after this worldwide broadcast and I love it! Sometimes missionaries get caught up in wanting to teach a million lessons just to hit goals or impress the zone. These changes have helped me realize that we can teach all we want but if people aren't keeping commitments and coming to church they can't be baptized and receive the blessings of the gospel. It's been really powerful and we're excited with this new direction!
Tuesday
The Lord is looking out for us in Pitt 7th. We had an awesome morning with a lesson with Nicky who is a less active member in the ward. While we were teaching her her friend Jeff showed up and we invited him to join us! It ended up being a powerful lesson about Joseph Smith and the Restoration and they both seemed really happy about it. New investigators have been falling in our lap and it's a huge blessing!
Wednesday
We taught Kayla in the morning and it was awesome. She is super prepared for the gospel and ready to make changes in her life. We taught the plan of salvation and it touched her heart. She just agreed with everything and said that it just made sense. I love when it clicks for people! I'm excited to keep teaching her, I think she has a lot of potential. We also had the worldwide broadcast for missionaries and things are changing around here! Our daily schedule has been changed a lot to allow what I feel like is more opportunities to make our own choices. I feel like they're helping us become life time disciples and it's great. I'm really excited and loved the focus they put on teaching repentance and baptizing converts. We were all pumped to start applying the things taught! We did some service at days for girls again and a lot of people are coming these days! It allows us to talk to more people and teach them while we serve. The Reyes had us over for dinner that night and I'm continually amazed at their love and kindness. They invited two other guys over besides us to eat and they love doing missionary work. Such good people!
Thursday
We definitely took advantage of the recently changed schedule and went running in the morning. We live right by that awesome view of Pittsburgh so it was amazing. The only problem is all of these hills, we got a good workout in for sure and 2 miles later I was feeling it. We got a referral in the morning for a lady that wanted a Bible and we ended up meeting her (Laquese) at 8:00 that night. She starts by saying she isn't religious and then just started going into things like asking us what tribe Lehi was from and what not. She asked us what tribe we were from and when I told her Ephraim she says: "Ahh so you're Puerto Rican?" 😂 What? Haha I explained to her I was German and she said: "No offense but I think you're from Esau." This lady was loca. We're going back to teach her the Restoration so we'll see what happens.
Friday
We had a really busy day doing some service and teaching the good word. Started by helping this less active lady move out of her house because she was getting evicted. Remember, paying rent is important. After all that fun we went to Beechview which is a little Spanish community. We made little fliers for English class that we're doing and went to the Latino store there in Beechview to hang them up everywhere. The guy at the store was super chill and told us to put them wherever we wanted. We've picked up a lot of interest in a free English class and it's helping us to find a ton of new investigators. 👍🏼 The Clarkes do an awesome job of teaching English and I love it as well. We ended the night with a good meeting a lady named Aimee. She's the perfect example of not judging a book by its cover. I loved how real she was and she's what makes this church so great.
Saturday
We tracted into a lady named Veronica the other week and she told us her husband had recently passed away at the age of 40. He passed away in his sleep and it's been really hard on her. We shared a little bit of the plan of salvation and it didn't really hit her as we had hoped... Dang. She's really nice and very Catholic but we'll see what happens! She was interested in English class on Monday so hopefully she comes! We took a little trek down to Monongahela to meet with Lina who the Elders recently found. We cover three stakes so when ever other missionaries find someone who speaks Spanish it's go time. The only problem is she lives pretty far from the group so we'll see what happens. She accepted the message of the restoration and has a ton of faith. She's super solid!
Sunday
No one came to church... ahh! It's frustrating to work hard and have people say they're coming and then not have anyone show up. We have to improve our commitments! We had a decent lesson with Sergio who we found last week. It was alright but his kids were pretty distracting. It just didn't seem like the message of the restoration really hit him so that was lame. I think the way with him is going to be through his kids so stay tuned there! Kind of left a bad taste in our mouths but we'll go get them this week. 👍🏼
Random thoughts
- The PA ramble continues to hold strong in South Side.
- I've noticed that the hispanics are pretty consistent in two things:
- Asking me to pray before meals and lessons.
- Watching me eat spicy food, they always wait to see the fuego hit me...
- We were teaching English to the Reyes family and one of the words of the lesson was "fast" and they could NOT say it. It was so funny/sad! They couldn't get the "s" before the "t" so they kept saying fat. We had a good laugh on that one. 😂 "FAAAHHHHTTTTTTSSS"
Have faith, have hope, live like His Son, help others on their way.
Love from the 412,
Elder Halls
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| You can always find a nice view in Pittsburgh |
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