I reached a strange point on my mission this week where I have fewer weeks left than I have months since I started. They always tell you that time goes by too fast, and they aren't joking. You really have to savor every day, even the tough ones or the boring ones, because if you are always waiting for something before you feel fulfilled or happy, you'll keep waiting until it's gone.
We have transfers this week, and I am staying with Elder Stewart, but we are losing one of our two wards. We're really sad to see some of the amazing people we're teaching, as well as the great members we have there go, but it will be nice to not always be confused about which member goes to which ward. There were a lot of faces to keep track of!
The other day we got some Chick-fil-a for lunch and ate it sitting on our tailgate outside the church in the warm afternoon sun. Somehow it felt very patriotic. Even Elder Stewart remarked that he felt rather American (despite being Canadian).
We were able to go and teach the woman who we met moving furniture last week. She wanted us to show her the gospel library app so that she could sing the hymns at church, and we also were able to teach the Book of Mormon along with a priest who was on his first ever visit to teach a non-member with us! She would say, "Ok, so Nephi..." and explain back the story after we explained it. It was a lot of fun. By the way, before my mission I just thought the pictures at the front of the Book of Mormon were just some sort of random selections, but they could not be ordered more perfectly for explaining what the Book of Mormon is. It starts with Christ (definitely not a coincidence), then has Joseph Smith, Nephi's family's journey to the Americas, stories about people obeying and rejecting prophets, Christ's visit to the Americas, and finally the plates being buried. I love explaining it using the pictures.
We have done a lot of bike contacting lately, which I am a big fan of. We go outside and start biking (which alone makes it fun), and then everyone we see, we go talk to. It is way better than walking because you are just in and out and fly around. Are you interested? No? We're already gone! You can overtake people walking away from you, and people walking towards you don't have the long, slow walk where they try to look anywhere but at you while you slowly approach. Anyway. Bikes. Tool of the gospel for sure.
Our approach is usually just to have some pass-along cards, and then we go up to someone and say, "Excuse me, we are giving out some pictures of Jesus today, could we give you one?" If they say no, we wish them a good day and continue on, and if they say yes, we talk to them a little and ask if we could call and share a message sometime about whatever topic we think they could be interested in. One poor lady we passed told us she was not interested, so we continued past her, but then we kept stopping and talking to other people on the side-walk just long enough for her to have to walk past us and then for us to pass her again before stopping someone else. It was kind of humorous.
We talked to one young fellow right outside our church building as we passed it and we said, "Hey, do you have a church you go to?" He said, yeah, look at this! And with no warning pulled his shirt up to his neck to show us the tattoo he had across his entire chest that said, 'GOD FIRST' in giant letters. He was very proud of it.
We also have been trying to teach people on Facebook. The general strategy is to find groups with people in Las Vegas, and friend all of those people. Then, if someone acepts the friend request, we send a message and try to start a conversation. We have done it for a while and have met some cool people. We sent one man a friend request, and he accepted it and then messaged us first saying how he had just broken up with someone or something and had been going through a rough relationship, and right then our friend request came through. He saw it as a sort of sign and texted us his whole life story and how he wanted to come to a church! The next day we did a videocall with him and the missionaries in the other mission where he lives, and were able to teach about the Book of Mormon (Again, haha. Hands down my favorite thing to teach about. Also hands down for favorite chapter to show people is 3 Nephi 11.). As we were wrapping up, the other missionaries (who had done the call from their church building) asked if they could bring him a copy of the Book of Mormon. He said, "Yeah. Wait, is that a church you're in? Like a church I can go to?" They said yes and told him where it was. He replied, "Oh, well don't come over! I'll just come to the church and you can show me around and give it to me there! I'll be there in like 5 minutes!" It was a super fun experience. He had some crazy stories to tell, but it is amazing how many people really are looking for something more and just don't know where to find it.
There is a family we are teaching with a wife who hasn't been active for years but recently got really excited about coming back to church. Her husband is not a member, and he has come every week in a row for three weeks now! We texted on Saturday to see if he would be able to make it, and he said something like, "Well, my wife is helping my niece recover from her surgery, so I don't think they can come." At this point we were like, "Aw, man!" He isn't coming this week. But then he said, "So, it might just be me by myself if they aren't going to make it." He had never come to church in his life before these last couple weeks, and it made us so happy that he liked it enough to come by himself, even without family support.
Anyway. There are so many little stories and occurrences that there aren't time to tell. Sometimes people say things like, "I'm so sorry that you have to be a missionary right now!" which honestly irritates me just a little, because there are so many good things happening! God's work certainly has not stopped, and there is so much work to do. There is nowhere else I would ever want to be.
Tomorrow we are taking some departing missionaries to the airport, and also picking up the brand-new missionaries! I am actually really excited to go and welcome them to Vegas for the first time; it'll be a lot of fun.
'Til we meet,
Elder Harris
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