It was an exciting day, yesterday. We've been trying to get creative in order to find new people, and so we thought we would give a virtual Bible study a shot! We put out some Facebook ads, but when the time came, nobody had joined the zoom meeting. We were just about to give up when I got a notification that said, "'Random Guy' has entered your waiting room." I said, "No way! We got one!" and hurried to admit them into the meeting, only to see my companion's face on the screen. The jokester had jumped on the meeting on his phone.
Being on a mission can definitely have some ups and downs of emotions. We are teaching a family that was supposed to be baptized tomorrow, but they had to come to church in order to do so. On Saturday night, the son had gotten off work, and everything seemed good to go. Sunday morning we texted them early to make sure they were still good to come, and then we left our missionary correlation meeting to go have them follow us over. We called on the way, but still no answer. We got there and their car was there, but after a lot of knocking, they didn't answer. We knocked for half an hour and called them half a dozen times to give them every chance to come to church and get baptized. Finally the son answered the phone and said he had gotten called into work, and then they answered the door and had just woken up and weren't going to make it. We finally got to church late, and nobody else that said the would come made it either. Then they announced from the pulpit, "This week we are going have a baptism, right elders?" We just had to shake our heads. "Oh, sorry, nevermind." It was just kind of an awkward and discouraging morning. To top it off, we got home to change out of our suits, and when I went to turn on the lights, the last big chunk of the white Christmas lights that are only lights in the room burnt out. Sigh. Later we found out the family had been out late the night before visiting family that had been hospitalized with COVID, so they have definitely been going through some difficult times. They'll get there soon. I think that the occasional times of sadness and frustration that come as a missionary are because from our perspective, we can see how much the gospel will help and bless people and give them everything they need, but sometimes they just don't realize it. It truly is the recipe for happiness.
But! There are always way more good times than bad. Our funny recent convert Andres recently got exposed to COVID, but had to wait on a test result. We asked him over text how he was doing, and he sent us a voice recording in a soft, weak voice that said, "Well . . . here I am . . . on my last breaths . . . Nah, I feel great!" He's the best. We did a videocall with his wife, who is in Guatemala and met her, which was awesome! Unfortunately, they live in a spot that is pretty far from the church. But he told us how he already showed her the gospel library app and has been reading the Book of Mormon with her.
We are living in luxury now. After weeks of persuading, my companion finally convinced me to let us get a new shower curtain since the old one was pretty gross. I was sad to say goodbye to our faithful periodic table shower curtain. I may never have a shower curtain quite so awesome again. But the new one is nice. And I finally retired my sacred (because they're so hole-y) sheets and bought some new ones, and they are mighty fine.
Maybe to make up for the sad Sunday, yesterday it started raining for the first time in months! It was so pretty outside and smelled like rain (instead of smoking), We jumped on our bikes with some english flyers we'd printed and went out to hang them up. It was some nice fresh air, and it is always fun to see how many Hispanic restaurants let us hang up the flyers. And to use any possible excuse to ring my new bike bell. We always try to talk to the people we pass by. We went by one Hispanic family at the bus stop and said hi, but then kept going. My companion after a minute said, "Elder, I think we should go back." It is always a little awkward, but they say that regret lasts longer than rejection. We went back and talked to this awesome young family that recently arrived to the States. Their three year-old son gave offered us a fist bump and we were able to talk to them. We talked to another older gentleman who showed us pictures of his old marathon running days and let us pray with him and set up a time to visit.
We also put another free english class ad on Facebook! They are crazy because we get hundreds of messages for days, so it makes us feel like a crazy, under-staffed call-center. But we end up sending referrals all over the valley and finding some for our own class, so that's really nice!
I love when you start to talk to someone in english, and they say, "No hablo ingles," confident that that will end the conversation. When a couple white kids say, "Perfecto! Hablamos español!" they are trapped and always look like deer in the headlights. You can always start a conversation just because they are taken off guard and can't seem to think of another rejection line. Once the opposite problem happened though, when my comp started talking to someone in Spanish and they said, "No hablo español." It was pretty awkward.
We got a phone call a few hours ago from someone who said, "I don't know if you remember me, but you gave me a picture of Jesus Christ while I was at the bus stop several months ago. I've been going through a divorce and some difficult things and thought maybe I could call you guys to help me feel closer to God again. You're the young guys with shirts and ties and bikes, right?" It was such a cool thing to see that no effort is ever wasted. This poor man that I didn't even remember saved that card for months, and later, when he was going through some difficulties, remembered a few young men that talked about God. We set up a time to visit and are really excited.
No te canses de luchar.
Til we meet,
Elder Harris
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