14 May 2019: Doorknobs and Broomsticks

Hola todos!

Its been a really fun week! Our zone really improved this week in the work, which was cool to see, and we had interviews with President Youngblood for half the zone on Friday. We had a fun time with that. Here is how this story goes. 

We are peacefully sitting in a district council on a beautiful Friday afternoon, around 12:45pm, intending to leave around 1 in order to prepare for interviews with President Youngblood at 2pm. As we were about to leave, we got a call from the Assistants, who told us that the location had abruptly changed to another church building, and they had also changed the time on us to be at 1pm! 

So we had to call the missionaries who needed to be at interviews. Here is how those conversations went "Hey elders how's it going? 'Good' 'Awesome, so we have some news. The location for interviews has changed to the Viking street chapel...and your interview starts in 3 minutes." 

"WHAT?! IT TAKES 30 MINUTES TO GET THERE!" 

So that was fun. The next day we had to drop off mail for another zone, so we went to go back to my alma mater zone, Sunrise Manor to have lunch with those zone leaders.

On the way to that we got a call from the vehicle coordinators for our mission, and they told us that we needed to come to the mission office in the next hour to trade in our Chevy Malibu for a brand new 2019 Chevy Equinox! Well we had to be obedient of course...so we went to the mission office to get it. 

From the people we are teaching, Rick is progressing really well. His wife is a member, and they live in a place called "Naked City". Needless to say its not the best part of town. Its behind The Strip, and in a really red light part of town. But they are really humble people, Rick and his wife Diana. She is so excited for his baptism. The moment we invited him to be baptized, she wrote down the day on her calendar. He comes to church every Sunday. We also are teaching Andre, whose siblings recently got baptized, and he is doing really well. He really wants to be with his family for eternity. 

Janet, is an older lady that we have been teaching, and she will be baptized on June 8th. We helped her in her home as a district on Wednesday, and she was almost in tears with how much love and kindness we showed her. Then on Saturday we had a lesson with her with a member, and we explained the importance of church to her, especially the Sacrament, and then at the end she said "Ok...I will go...but its so early!" We have church at 9am. The next day, on Sunday, we got there around 8:30, and there sits Janet, who had been there for a bit, literally came 45 minutes early! We were so happy, and then she went to the Mother's Day Luncheon after Sacrament meeting. It was so awesome to have her there. 

Spiritual thought: Its so important that when we seek truth, we actually actively seek it. We found a person that had formerly been taught and talked to her for a bit and then came back on Sunday night. The first time she said she would look into it and wanted us to come back because she is "spiritual" and wants to look into this. When we came back, I swear she was drunk at first, and when she answered the door, her mom was feeding her Anti-Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints material, and she did not want to talk to us. I wasn't feeling like bashing, but I asked her why she thought we were a cult, and she said she didn't think we need a prophet in today's world because everyone has common sense. We ended up teaching her the whole Restoration, as powerfully as we knew how, and by the end her heart had softened. My point by telling this story, is that she barely looked into what we gave her, and not with a willing heart to learn. There is an urgency to the Lord's work. If we want to learn what is true in this world we have to study it out in our mind, and ask God if its true. That is what we committed this lady to do. This is what you do to know if something is true. I promise you that if you do that, you will receive an answer. If you are considering looking into the Church, I invite you to do so, because anything that is of God, is good, and this gospel is great!

Funny moment:

Saturday night we were proselyting with a member, and we knocked on the door of a referral at 8pm, and a person asked "who is it?!" We said "the missionaries" and she tries to open the door, and the doorknob falls off. It was so hard not to die laughing. Then she opens the door and she is holding the door knob in her hand while she is on the phone, and we ask "Is Lance there?" And her eyes got real big, and she says into the phone "Hey babe, there are two Mormons asking about you..." she was on the phone with our referral. Good thing the guy is really cool. That was probably the funniest door contact of my mission thus far. 

Have a great week!

Elder Lovell

Pics:

Canes with Sunrise Manor Zone Leaders

Where the sidewalk slants

Jamisha, a lady I taught in my last area got baptized, which is such a cool story.

Elder Loutensock and I our new Equinox