Hello all!
Happy post April fool's day! I must admit yesterday wasn't as eventful as one might please, but maybe that is a good thing. I definitely wasn't thinking last p-day about the fact that April Fool’s Day was coming up, otherwise I might have tried to get something together- brownies that make your pee blue or something. Anyways hope you all had a good one!
This week was a little slow- seems like little things have just been coming up here and there. The work pretty much hit a climax right before I got here (there have been twelve baptisms here in this area in the last six months), but now the work that was going on is complete to a degree. Now we are trying to start things up again, so that takes a little more patience, but I have been grateful for the things we have done thus far. I will just give you a brief summary of what has been going on...
Wednesday- the temple was great! We went and had some good food at a place called Junior's- it has the best cheesecake! After that, we spent our proselyting time helping somebody move a couple of buildings away- good opportunity for service.
Thursday we had some weekly planning, after which we had a coordination meeting with the missionaries in our ward (there are ten of us so it is a good opportunity to talk about things going on as a district and check things out with the dinner calendar and getting on the same page. It takes a coordinating to work together). Afterwards we did church tours, where we go out on the streets outside of the chapel and invite people to come in and check out the church. It's a good way to get people into the church and feel the spirit, especially as they see the contrast between the hustle and bustle outside and the peace in the chapel. After that, we finished our weekly planning then traveled a little ways to our dinner and that was pretty much the night.
Friday I went on a split with Elder Johanson! I live with him and his companion is my district leader. They are a lot of fun and it was good to get that one-on-one time with him. He is on his second transfer cycle, so he is still good and fresh. He is from Utah but likes Georgia- even has a UGA hoodie that he wears for service and stuff. Anyways, we went "train tracting" where we just go contact on trains, and then we went to look up some media referrals. We found one lady who was a less active, Dominican, but pretty Americanized and she really appreciated us visiting her. We got juked by a guy and so we kept looking others up until we had dinner at Iris's house, a little old Jamaican lady we have every week, then our online event all together as a district- talked about family history. That was the day!
Saturday we went to clean the church, after which we had lunch and then went to a lesson with our investigator Xavier. He is fifteen and the rest of his family was recently baptized (I actually had a lesson with them on a split almost a year ago when I was in concourse) and he says he wants to get baptized eventually, but not right now. He is a good guy and so we are patiently working with him. After that we spent some good time organize less actives on the LDS tools app (getting ready to try to find a bunch of less actives) and then we tried to stop by a less active with whom we are working, but she wasn't there. We went and met with the other Elders in our district took dinner together and had a "man night" where we just are pizza together while the women were at the broadcast. That was about it for the day.
Sundays are a little harder because we can't really do anything until like 5:00- we have studies and then meetings and them church at 1:30. What we ended up doing was going to dinner after church, but it was a little ways away and then it was a Dominican member, so she started cooking right when we got there, so it took up the rest of the night. It was good though- we talked about family history and her parents were there- they were in concourse when I was there so I knew them and talked with them in Spanish. When it came time for the lesson, I just translated for them- I enjoy doing that, it is kind of a fun challenge that keeps me on my feet and definitely makes me pay 100% attention. And it was good eating some good Spanish food- I love it!
Monday we had district meeting and then I went on an exchange with Elder Nelson. We lived together for four cycles up in Newburgh, so we're good friends so it was cool being able to go with him. He is actually down in Concourse right now in a different area, but lives where I lived when I was there, so that was weird going back to that apartment. We had a good day though- we painted this one lady's house, met with a less active that had some not so pleasant experiences with many other church members, and was basically refusing to go to church. And then we went to a birthday party of a girl in a recently reactivated family. That was fun, but I always feel super out of place at those with all of the Spanish people just having a good time. Haha but we shared a good message and then got on our way.
Tuesday we continued with the exchange (we do it from noon one day to noon the next- that is what President likes). It was a little crazy though because we went back to help the lady we helped paint. We were there from about 8:00am-3:00pm, but she fed us breakfast and lunch.
She had way too much stuff for a tiny little apartment. It was a pain getting it all in there, but we did it! By the time we unsplit, went back, got my stuff, returned to our apartment and I got ready and studied a little, it was about five. We had a little miracle- we were looking some people up and we came to a building that had a list of the residents on it. The name we were looking for wasn't there, so we tried the next closest thing. We knocked and found a completely different person, but she was indeed a member that was hoping to come back to church. We exchanged information and now we are planning on going back in the next week. It was cool to see God guiding us there! Afterwards, we went to the church and met a part member family there for lesson, then got juked with a skype lesson, then we had a lesson with a reactivated less active. That was the night!
Today is pretty chill- we don't have anything planned in particular- just hang out, probably go check out what is going on at the church. We did have an experience this morning at the laundry mat- a lady came up to us and looked at our name tags and said "derniers jours" which is the French equivalent of latter day. She was from Congo and we tried to talk to her and give her a card but she didn't understand very well and refused to take the card. We then eased things up by having her teach us a little French. I felt like that was an experience to justify Elder Davidson’s and my desire to learn French. Hopefully that won't have to happen again!
Anyways, it was a good week! Sorry for writing so much, but now you kind of have an idea about how things go here. It is a great area and I love Elder Davidson! He is a great missionary, companion and friend. I look forward to continuing to see great things here.
Thanks for the love and support! Hope you have a great week!
-Elder Griffiths
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