Dang I just can't help but be bummed about what happened this past week as far as the election goes. It makes things look pretty dismal for those who are looking for a brighter future, but then again, makes sure that the only thing that we really have to hold onto are living the principles of the Gospel. So in God's eyes I guess it's a good way to weed out the righteous and eliminate the natural man by having everyone on one side or the other. I also thought it was pretty funny if you happen to look up how the Voting went in the Counties of Texas, its a pretty Red State with some Blue majorities along the borders...oh yeah...and that one County up in Northeast Texas called Dallas! Of all the places to have a Liberal edge in Texas it would be Dallas haha lame.
But other than that HUGE bump in the road, we have had a pretty positive last week. On the bright side, the "Boil Water" Notice was lifted, so that means that our Tap water is somewhat clean and safe to use! We also got the opportunity to start teaching a family of 8! They came to the Halloween party last week and are starting to get more and more interested in our church. It was one of those lessons where you truly do see that serving a mission is marriage prep, because sometimes our companions don't treat all situations like you would expect...and demands some work and patience. So as were teaching a young couple that are dating and each of them have 3 kids (and they're not living together which is a miracle!), the oldest of which was 15...and my companion is just SPEWING doctrinal fact that really take a while to truly understand, but he was throwing stuff at them so fast that he lost the kid's attention in a heartbeat and left their parents trying to have them sit still and pay attention and all that jazz. So then I was able to use some other teaching techniques that I had learned from some other great missionaries throughout the mission to help them understand very simply what we had just talked about, but then my comp just kept trudging on (still trying to decide who was more interesting...my BYU Book Of Mormon teacher who put me to sleep every tuesday, thursday, and friday, or my comp...). He turned the time over to a member who started talking about his testimony of Joseph Smith and the Gold Plates before we had even finished the whole concept of a Prophet, but his wife was super awesome and was able to calmly notify him that he was jumping was too far ahead and she was able to tailor her testimony to their knowledge and progression. As my comp just started giving fact after fact on the reformers and the kids started running around and just going crazy while their parents were saying "Sit down!" and "Stop That"...and "Put that down!", and my comp just kept talking to them like he had their complete attention during the whole process. The Sister member that we had brought was doing a great job at putting the doctrine simply and applying it to them (God bless the Relief Society), so I saw that we needed to call an audible and change the whole plan before my comp decides to challenge them to baptism and they've completely spaced on the idea that there was an apostasy. I decided to take my experiences from the 4 months up at Mitchell Eagles and was able to just teach the little kids with my picture book and play games with my whiteboard very quietly while I trusted the parents and the 15 year old to Sister Parton who was saving the dry teaching. I would try and listen in for a couple seconds and give my input on what they were teaching while occupying all the kids, and my favorite part was when Jeremy, the 15 year old said, "When you were telling me about the Book Of Mormon, I said a little prayer to ask if it really was true, and I heard, 'Yes My Son'" As funny as the whole experience was, especially when he explained his answer on the church, it did teach me that no matter what we say, it will only be the spirit that will be converting others, and we can only do our best at setting the stage for him to come and for the investigator to understand him. So as frustrating of a lesson as it was for me, it taught me a few lessons, gave me an opportunity to play with some kids (haha it's been so long! You have to treat them and single women like the plague as a missionary), and also gave me the opportunity to teach my significant other haha.
This week we had also brought out a couple of recent converts with us to go teaching, and as we started teaching the Word Of Wisdom, it turned into a complete drug war of stories with how much drugs someone had used or how bad they were or what they saw and all that. It turned into a fantastic lesson with us barely involved (due to our ignorance on being addicted and what to expect), but the recent converts were able to give strong testimonies and experiences about how they were able to overcome their addictions only through this church. In the words of Tommy, "The only inspiration I got from AA was to run across the street, go drink a beer, and never come back!" So he was able to show how the Gospel dwarfs any other addiction facility and they connected super super well. It turned into them sharing experience after experience and what principle would help them the most while we would just listen and laugh at what turned out to be our favorite quotes haha. One of my favorite stories was (viewer discretion advised) was when the member Jamie walked in her house and got a call from an Addiction therapist asking how her husband Tommy was doing and she said, "Well he's over in the corner messing around with the lamp, but he hasn't made a bong out of it yet so I think we're doing alright..." and then when she got another call she said, "Yeah he's just fixing the televi...wait a second..." It was hilarious but a good lesson and easily my favorite of the week.
Well I hope that yall don't let the liberal cloud hang over you and if any of you are interested, Texas starts handing out residential forms if you live here for 6 months or more for when Texas secedes from the United States. Just about every living soul I've talked to here said that they would vote for it in a heartbeat haha. I've invited everyone over to California for when we blow away the borders and become an Island. It may be dominated by liberals, but all I know is that they don't have guns and won't stand a chance as we become our own country in alliance with Texas. Happy Birthday Grandma and congrats to Kenna for getting called to Temple square! I really can't believe just how many people are serving missions now, but at least I'll be able to tell my kids that I was serving a mission when there were only 55,000 missionaries. So good luck to whoever else turned in their papers, I'm always surprised because someone new makes the choice to serve just about every week now! Love yall!
Elder Justin Wilson
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