"Elders, I have good news!" It was the first counselor. "What is it?" we asked. "You're speaking on Sunday!" Haha, so it was. It was funny because just about a month ago, one of the stake high councilors called me and asked me to be his speaking partner in our ward, and now we spoke again! With how busy we have been teaching, the only time we had to prepare was from about 9:45 to 10:15 on Saturday night, but I think it went well. But Sunday was also super awesome because our main man and recent convert Andres blessed the sacrament. He was pretty nervous but did great. He is so solid.
My companion this week got a friend request from someone in the Philippines who said, "Hi Jared, can you teach me a little about your religion?" We kind of thought it was just a robot or someone trying to mess with us, but we set up a Zoom call (even though he is 16 hours ahead of us) and he is one of the most sincere and prepared people I have ever met! When we started the call, he told us a summary of the first vision, how we believe in a living prophet, and how he is interested in the kingdoms of glory and the spirit world. He had been trying to do some research to learn more by himself but didn't want to just Google things because he would find lots of incorrect information as well. We retaught the restoration, and before we even brought it up, he said, "I guess now I'll just have to read the Book of Mormon and pray about if it is true!" Haha, it is amazing. Hopefully we can help him find missionaries in the Philippines soon.
We also got a call out of the blue from someone we met in the park one time and had sent an occasional text to or called once or twice. She started crying and telling us about many stresses and problems she was experiencing. We tried to listen sympathetically and be supportive for about 7 minutes. Then we shared a little scripture. She told us, "Through all of this, I've felt like nobody has been there for us or really cared about except for you guys, always checking in on us and seeing how we're doing. My church is so big, I just feel lost in the crowd. So, I was thinking I might want to be part of you guys. Is that possible? How would I do that?" We were blown away! From our perspective, we made some pretty small efforts to be friendly and say hi to this family, but it meant the world to them and when they started going through something difficult, they thought to call us and now even have desires to come and be part of the church.
We went to visit some members who recently moved into our ward this week. They are a super cool young couple with two kids. We shared a quick thought after getting to know them, and then as we were going to leave, we asked if there's anything we could do to help their family. The husband said, well just to come back and keep teaching us because my wife hasn't been baptized yet. That happens to be our specialty, but it was a funny surprise!
A sister missionary in our zone got to return to her reassignment in Chile, but when she got there, her COVID test had been turned in too early or something, and she got deported! So now she is back here and is going back to Chile this week. But that would quite the story to tell.
So, we are the zone leaders right now, but our district leader also got sent to Chile. We were excited to see who would replace him, but instead his old companion got put into a trio and we are the new district leaders as well for the rest of the transfer, haha. We're scrambling around so much it's crazy.
So, we have been having some miracles with English classes! With some trial and error we finally figured out how to Facebook advertise really well and got about 500 messages responding to our ad. We developed a whole system where we had a document with a pre-written response depending on the english class location that gave the person information, so we were copying and pasting like lightning. We sent around 150 referrals from that to missionaries around the mission for their English classes and got a group of over 50 people that wanted to come to our class. We had 13 nonmembers, most of which we had never met, end up coming, and several more had tried to get on our Zoom link but just couldn't with technical difficulties. We always teach English and share an optional spiritual thought at the end (no baiting and switching allowed), but everyone always stays for it. Then during the week, we would set up individual lessons with our students and teach them more along with a more individualized spiritual thought. We have gotten a lot of compliments on how people love that we also speak Spanish so we actually understand them and explain things well, and how the classes are professional.
But it is crazy how easy it is to teach the gospel with the classes! As we get to know them in English, they feel very connected to us and comfortable with us. With more than one person, all we said was "We'd like to share a scripture from the Book of Mormon, have you ever heard of it?" and then they told us about how they have gone to some churches before but don't have a church now, and it was super easy to invite them to come and see ours. One person came this Sunday with us, and after the closing prayer, I noticed her wiping some tears away. She said that she felt something really special in her heart. Another lady after our lesson asked where she could go to buy a Book of Mormon and how much it would cost. We assured her that for the low low price of $11.99 -- haha just kidding, we assured her that we would love to bring her one for free.
Also, this week I passed up 18 months! All the sisters in my MTC district are gone. A member asked us how long I had been out, and I automatically said, "a little over a year," because it still feels like that. But I only have 6 months left! There's too much work to do! Ahhhhhh!
So anyway! That's that for now. 'Til we meet.
Elder Harris
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