Its been a very rough week. We had Zone Conferences this week and so we had to eat free lunches almost everyday. On top of that, we had member meals almost every night and they gave us seconds everytime.
If that's not bad enough, we had to teach something like 10 lessons this week and we were able to get a member with us to around 80% of those lessons. The price we pay as missionaries...
No, in all seriousness, this has been a fantastic week. I wish that I could tell you all the miracles that we've seen, but I will stick to one story that really strengthened my testimony that the Lord puts us where He needs us.
Thursday night, we had a lesson at the Kitley home, our ward mission leader. He was able to set up a lesson with Brother Somchay, an investigator who is married to a member, in his house and we were able to go and teach him. The lesson went really well and Brother Kitley was so instrumental in helping Brother Somchay understand what we taught him. Brother Somchay, at the end of the lesson committed to baptism if he knew the Book of Mormon is true and left committed to get his answer. In his closing prayer--probably one of the most humble prayers I have ever heard--he asked specifically to know if the Book of Mormon was true so that he would be able to be baptized and recieve the Priesthood. As we talked with Brother Kitley at the end of it, we realized that he moved here from Connecticut just recently and he didn't know why he needed to come here, he just knew that he needed to move to Illinois. Brother Somchay has been investigating for 40 years and the only thing that changed in all that time was Brother Kitley.
On a less spiritual note, we had one of the most interesting service projects of my life this last Saturday. We were asked to help a family move and so we headed over in our service clothes and on the way, we got a call from the Bishop saying to be careful, because this family has over 20 ferrel cats living in their house and if we were called upon to help catch them, we were to tell them that we were not able to do so. We laughed it off, but when we got there, we quickly stopped laughing. Every piece of furniture in that house was covered in cat urine and cat hair and the whole house smelled musty and as if 20 ferrel cats were living there. It was so bad, that one of the desks we moved was glued to the carpet from years of cat pee that it actually ripped up the carpet when we took it out. The whole experience was easily summed up when our ward mission leader got there and found out what the situation was. Elder Glines was explaining to him the deal with the cats when they saw myself and another missionary carrying out a mattress frame covered in what was mentioned above. I guess he saw the look on our faces, combined with Elder Glines' explanation and he just said, "Oh please no..."
I am so gratful--as always--for all of you. I know I say it a lot, but it's worth saying! I love you all!
Elder Arkoudas
No comments:
Post a Comment