Transfer calls were on Saturday and President Smith asked if I would take on the responsibility to train a new missionary. I don't know if I feel more sorry for him or myself but I don't doubt we'll have a lot of laughs. Kind of crazy to know that the Lord apparently trusts me enough with someone brand new. Good heavens I still haven't felt like I have learned anything.
Well last night was hilarious now that I look back on it. Elder Upchurch and I were trying to sleep around the usual time but about an hour later I hear "HEY METCALF YOU STILL UP?"
"YES"
Man, the worst sleep ever gets even worse.
About 2:30am last night is when all the fun started. I'll start out by saying that we probably don't live in the greatest town in the world so when I was abruptly woken up in the night by a loud BANG needless to say I was way freaked out.
"....psssttt...upchurch..."
"....whatttt...."
"I'm scared outta my mind....i think that was a gunshot..."
"..go back to bed..."
Finally when I unfroze I got up to check out the situation and it was just a couple slamming doors and fighting. The usual shenanigans at the good ole Northview complex.
Elder Upchurch goes home in about 3 hours so I will just say it has been a crazy past 6 weeks. I am surprised that we got so much work done while laughing so much. I think the good part was that I learned a lot more to relax and enjoy the hard and fun times of serving a mission.
Jody fed us last night for the 4th of July and I think we had barbecue for the 4th time that week. Which for some reason just keeps getting better and better. (Holy cow I talk about food way too much) However we did some running and cutting back on so much destruction to our bodies known as overdosing on BBQ that we actually lost about 7 lbs each.
The best part about the night is that Jody asked if she could come out teaching with us. Our response was funny because we were pretty stoked on it. She has a great testimony for the Gospel and the Book of Mormon and has no problem getting baptized. Just that one thing that is a big road block to the actual baptism.
This morning was fun, the ward threw on a pancake breakfast (oh great, more food stories) and we had many non-members there that were easy to socialize with. At times we feel like we just might be 17 year olds trapped in these 22 year old bodies because the youth swarm to us wanting to 'hang out'. Must be Elder Upchurch.
The majority of our dinner appointments this week, the members had non-member friends over which is awesome because it seems like the ward is trusting the missionaries a lot more. Everything was going great until a member asked "hey I hear y'all are leading the mission in teaching and have 7 baptisms lined up, is that true?"
"not really, we cant baptize!"
I have learned to deal with it more so instead of having my world crash every weekend I have to understand that these people have their agency and no matter how much I may be able to bring the Spirit, it still is their choice whether to hit the snooze on the alarm or not.
I had another unique experience where I was going to give that 'resurrection of the Book of Mormon' lesson to a family and then it hit me that it goes much deeper then I had intended it to. You think about when the church was set up by Christ during His mortal ministry the church itself was mortal and was eventually murdered by the persecutors to the truth. The Atonement is so powerful that it even resurrected the church and the Gospel and that they will never 'die' again. The cool part of it all was that at the beginning of this transfer I had been working and praying for a new way to teach and understand the message of the restoration. I was pleasantly surprised that I had received such a unique answer to a prayer.
Another great experience this week was taking out a youth who never seemed to interested in coming. Now he is participating and giving teaching a shot. In Sunday school he even started participating and following the lesson while the others simply took a back seat with their iPhones. Heck yeah, the Lord is well aware of His youth.
A big miracle this week was a lady that overcame her fears of the Church and came to tour the building. This was huge for her. She has received some great spiritual witnesses but has heard a lot of racist comments concerning the church (all anti is lies!). She agreed to come to a church tour but wasn't there at the time we had scheduled so we went over with our member to teach at her home but instead she put on her shoes and said "I'm ready! Let's go"
In the chapel, the Spirit was the strongest. For some reason it felt like I was experiencing exactly what she was feeling. So I asked "How do you feel?"
"I feel like I am at home..."
How awesome is that? Surely in some way we should all feel like home in the chapel.
Anyway I apologize for how weak this letter is this week. Still trying to recover from last night's stress...HA!
Pray for this new missionary to have compassion on his crazy trainer. I think we are going to have a great time though.
Love y'all.
Elder Metcalf
No comments:
Post a Comment