Opening up an area is hard work, trying to learn a second language that I hardly use, and my companion is as new at this as I am. But I figure I've got to put my cowboy boots on sometime and walk through the crap til I get to the daisies. :)
Monday: We stayed in Guthrie because we didn't have the miles to drive down to Edmond so we ended up emailing at the library. The computers were awful. We like the OCU college ones a lot better. :)
Anyways after we played some basketball with our investigator Zack. He's a ton of fun. We had dinner with a family and then we helped another family clean up their backyard. It was a pretty crazy day.
Tuesday: We did some service for the food pantry again. E. Rumsey had an ingrown fingernail and something wrong with his ear so we arranged for some doctor appointments and got him all fixed up! The only problem was that it took all day. We did get to meet this guy who worked with Mitt Romney last year during the presidential election. He was in charge of the advertising for all of Oklahoma. He was telling us about how he appreciates missionary service and that he just loved talking to Mitt Romney about it.
Wednesday: It was the 12th anniversary of 9/11. Can you believe it? It feels like yesterday that I happened. It's even crazier that 11 months ago I was filling out my mission papers and 7 months ago I left on my mission! And now . . . I'm in Oklahoma! :) Trying to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear . . . . :)
E. Otuafi was super sick and I wasn't feeling super good either so we stayed back while Spafford and Rumsey went back to the food bank to help out. I took care of Otuafi and then Zack called and needed some help so we went over and helped him move some metal into his truck.
Later on we went down to our area and tried to find some more of those "unknown" addresses. As we were finding one, we saw this little car pull into a driveway so we went over and asked this girl if she knew where the address was. She laughed because she didn't know where it was either. But we ended up asking if we could share a message with her. Her twin brother and older sister both came outside and listened to the message too! :) We told them about the restoration and how we have prophet on the earth today. The original girl didn't seem to terribly interested - but not too many 17 year old girls are interested in God these days . . . .
Thursday we went to visit Monroe (Pork Chop). He loves to tell stores and we showed up he was giving us council on our needs and wants. While we were there, one of his friends showed up. She's a 35 year old woman who's had a really rough year. Her husband and her mother both passed away and she's feeling very angry with the world, God, just everyone. So we tried to show her how she can be happy - but she told us that she was atheist and had studied every religion from A-Z. It was good just to let her vent all of her problems. We let them talk until dinner and then we left to get to another appointment.
We visited that family that lives next to her parents. They were out in their front yard and were pumped to see us again! We even got to meet their kids who were playing outside and they were still wearing their uniforms that they wear to their little catholic school. They had 3 boys that were just so cool. They're a non-denominational family but believe in a TON of the things that we do. We all shared some miracles from our past and it was just good to sit and talk on the porch again! That's one thing that I miss about Anadarko!
Friday was the 13th! We had district meeting in Edmond and then decided that we should grill up some food. After district meeting I was talking to another Elder who was having a hard time opening up a new area too. He told me that we can learn something from each of our areas and each of our companions. It's got me thinking about what I've learned in Anadarko and what I've learned from Beach, Curry, Nelson, Tripp, Corey, Read, and Rumsey. We grilled up some peppers, steak, chicken, and corn and it was good. I'm getting pretty good at grilling if I do say so myself.
I'm coming to realize that Bishop Collins was right - All of our trials are tailored to us. I'm know that I'm going to have plenty of more difficult times ahead of me, so all I can do is put my boots on and keep going until I get to stepping on the daisies.
Saturday was a long day. We loaded up our bikes and headed down to our area. We had just unloaded the bikes, got saddled up and started pedaling - we were no more than 50 feet away from our car when my bike chain literally snapped in half! So I kicked the chain to the side of the road and spent the rest of the day scootering on my bike. It was definitely faster than walking. We had absolutely no success for about 3 hours. One lady told us that she was going to call the cops and another opened her door and told us "I'm not a Mormon" and then shut the door. (I think that was my favorite denial yet!) Then we knocked on a minister for the Church of Christ. And he basically told us that everything about our religion was wrong and that we weren't allowed to call ourselves Elders. blah blah blah - and things went downhill from there. I just he just wasn't prepared to hear about the restored gospel yet. :)
We had an appointment with our Spanish investigator but he ended up not being home but we did meet some other people. Jim restores cars for a living and had a really cool 71 Chevelle that he showed us. Gloria is from Mexico and doesn't speak a lick of English but we talked with her for about 45 minutes and taught her about the Book of Mormon and it was way good! We ended up walking another 5 miles and didn't meet a soul. Go team, go!
Sunday was crazy. Church was awesome as always. We took Brother Larson with us to teach a Spanish lesson but we realized that the closest Spanish branch is about 45 minutes from Edmond. We're not sure what the best option is for our Spanish speaking investigators be we're still going to try to teach them. We tried to visit with all 3 of them but no body was home. We ended up going back to our apartment and finished up some studies. We had dinner with the Bailey's and then went out with the youth for the rest of the night.
It's been a little frustrating this week but it's slowly coming along. :)
I love and miss you all a ton!
Keep praying . . .
Keep the Faith . . .
Love,
Elder Harris
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