Gooooooood
morning family! This week was such a roller coaster of a week. We had so many
highs and so many lows and I'm pretty sure I did a loop as well. Kinda like the
Colossus at Lagoon, the double loop thing. Yeah if I could describe my week that's
what it would be like...... Now I really want to go on a roller
coaster...... Anyone want to plan a trip after my mission? ;)
Disclaimer.....
this email is going to be a lengthy one.... sorry....
Anyway, let's start out with the exciting stuff! JAZLIN GOT BAPTIZED!! Yay!! For those
who don't know or just don't remember, Jazlin is a 16-year-old girl we have been
teaching for about 6 weeks. And then she just decided to get baptized a week
ago while we were just chatting on her door step while introducing Elder Reese
who was new to the area. Boy oh boy was I stressed out pretty hard. Planning a
baptism in a week is really stressful. But that is when she wanted to be
baptized. But she made it, and man was she beaming when she came out of
the font. And then on Sunday when she was confirmed she told me. "whoa
that receiving of the holy ghost thing. That was crazy. It felt so.....
Intense.... If that makes sense" I'm so happy for her. I'm sending
some photos.... {I know my emails have been lacking photos...... I need to get
better. So, this next week I will be taking more pictures! Let's see if I can
actually do it haha.} anyway she now is a member of Christ's true church
restored upon the earth and I couldn't be happier!
Anyway,
the rest of my week was pretty good. Just a lot of prep work for the baptism we
had, but on Tuesday we had district meeting which was really awesome. We did a
ton of finding and we also visited a bunch of potentials who had been in the
area book for forever..... needless to say, they weren't really that
interested. So, we did a bunch of area book clean up that day. Which was
totally okay, we met some really nice people but they weren't interested. It’s
so strange I find myself getting so freaking excited when someone takes 5 mins
of their time to listen to what we have to say. It’s so cool how in an instant
when we are contacting someone striking up a conversation is so easy. I think
back to the beginning of the mission, I HATED contacting and tracting. But now It’s
just become a habit. Whenever I'm anywhere I try talking to people in line,
walking down the street, at a restaurant, I found myself trying to talk to
someone on the other side of the gas pump while we were filling our cars.
Contacting always brings some humorous situations and interesting people. Like
we met the coolest guy on Tuesday while we were in the park trying to talk to
people. He had an army hat on and was just sitting on the banks fishing. So, I
walked up to him and asked if he had served in the military, he said he did and
I thanked him for his service (like I usually do when I see a police officer,
firefighter, and of course anyone who was in the military) When I thanked him
he said it was his pleasure, he was kinda taken back for a second. He told us
he really hasn't had anyone thank him for serving before. Which is incredibly
sad...... But we started talking. He wasn't interested at all in the gospel but
we talked about how after he got out of the military he got a job for the post
office. He said "Oh man I hate the post office. One minute you are out
blowing stuff up and getting shot at and in return shooting at people, to
delivering letters and packages and filling out paper work." He was a cool
guy.
On
Wed we did some service for a lady we found while we were finding one day named
Ginni. She knows a bunch of people in the ward and loves them all. We got
talking and she expressed how she has a big project coming up. We told her we
would love to help and we could even bring over a few extra missionaries. She was
shocked and said she couldn't pay us. We assured her this was purely service.
And she got all excited and we planned a day to come over. We'll we went over
and had a really fun time. We brought the Hermanas with us. She was curious
what the Girl Elders looked like ;) so we went and helped her move some things out
of her garage. She does a bunch of floral arrangements for different things so
she has hundreds of vases in her garage in alphabetical order for the theme. It
was insane! We got it all done and she was incredibly thankful. She then went
inside and grabbed a bag for us. She cooked us dinner!!! It was a lot of
food..... when the 4 of us got back to the church we found a scale and weight
it. IT WAS 11 POUNDS OF FOOD. She cooked us some stir fry and fried rice and
gave us strawberries. There was so much food. We are going to go back and see
if she would be interested in a message about family history. She seemed pretty
interested in it when we were talking about it briefly when we went over and
did service!
That
night we had an interesting experience. We had a lesson fall through so we had
no clue what to do for an hour. We were driving and we passed an apartment
complex. We both felt like we should go tract some apartments and see what
comes of it. We got out of the car and started knocking doors. Everyone that
night was unusually nice...... Usually when you have a string of unusually nice
people the lord is preparing you for someone or something that isn’t going to
be unusually nice ;) At least that's what I have experienced. Well we were
walking through the complex when this lady saw us and jogged up to us. She said
that she grew up with the Mormons and would like to talk to us. We were stoked! So we said sure. She had to run to the store so she told us to come back in 20
mins. Well 20 minutes passed and we showed up to her apartment. There was a super
nice guy named Steven there. He was her friend and he was just the coolest
nicest guy ever. We talked about what he did for work. HE MAKES GUITARS FOR A
LIVING. That's so freaking chill. Anyway, when we got to her apartment and she
well....... started to tell us what we believed and was trying to "Educate
us" And trying to convince us that reformation was needed within in the
Mormon church. She told us how the Book of Mormon had been changed and edited
and how she thought that it was stupid to send out inexperienced 19-20 year old
kids to go and try to teach people her age. She made it clear that she was 41
and made sure we knew that she had lots more life experience. Hahaha it was
ridiculous some of the passages she tried to quote from the Book of Mormon
(They were completely made up).... She almost had me laughing at one point. But
through it all I just felt such a love for this woman who was trying to tear down
our faith. So, as she lectured us, whenever we could get a word in we would
testify of our beliefs and every time we bore testimony she couldn't fight it.
she would use the excuse of your wrong and couldn't back it up with anything.
But the cool part was whenever we opened our mouth we could feel the spirit
really strongly but when she started talking the spirit left pretty quickly.
And Steven (Her friend who was there for all of this. Not really speaking but
when he did he would defend us. He had no clue what the church was but he tried
to defend us which was super cool) so finally our final invitation to her and
Steven was to read and pray about it. Only read the Book of Mormon. Not a book
about the Book of Mormon but the book itself and to pray about it. We gave them
both a book and left. while we were leaving Steven asked us where our church
was and what our phone number was. He said he would be interested in meeting
with us. WE WERE SO PUMPED. We haven't heard from him yet but I have faith we
will be getting a call here soon.
The
rest of the week was filled with similar things, but not any cool or
interesting experiences so I won't go too much in detail about the last half of
the week. But the week ended with the baptism and it ended on a really high note.
Even if I may have had a pen explode in my suit pocket and get ink all over my
shirt and suit. BUT IT'S OKAY! I was actually able to get it out of the shirt
by a miracle and I'm taking my suit in to see if they can clean up the extra
ink. (You can’t see the ink because it’s a black suit but I don't want to get
more ink on my shirts) :D Anywho! It was a good week and I hope all of you had
amazing weeks as well! I LOVE YOU ALL! God is real and he does know us very
personally. I can testify of that strongly. I have had experiences on my
mission that have proved to me God knows me really well haha :D The Book of
Mormon is true and this is the lord’s church restored again to the earth. And I
couldn't be happier being a part of his work. One half down another to GO!!!!
Let's see what miracles God will allow me to be a part of :D
-Elder
Riley Field
Pictures!
JAZLIN!
And a
meme that got sent to me by a youth in the ward..... it's true fam.... it's all
a conspiracy.... ;)
-Elder
Riley Field
*Excerpts from an email sent to Mom:
Oh, I
didn't even email about brother Rowland. We had an awesome lesson with him this
week. We taught him the first half of the restoration. Only half of it because
he started expressing his concerns with the church and his expectations for
these meetings. It was a super good! Apparently, some of the things that have
been holding him back have been some stuff he found on the internet..... hahaha
so we will show him where to get good sources of information. His wife told him
she wants him to get baptized and be sealed in the temple....... It was
bold...... but good..... we got all the expectations out on the table of where
we all want the meetings to go. And we are all on the same page. and he is
ready to learn and pray :D I so hope he starts to progress. We also got a
pretty sweet referral this week. We set up a time to meet with them on wed. :D
I will let ya know how that goes :D
I
showed off my Shakespeare knowledge this week in church. In gospel principles
class the teacher was teaching and she started quoting a monologue from the
show Hamlet. While she was quoting it, I guess I was mouthing it as well. Well
the teacher saw me and asked if I knew what it was from. I rattled off the show
who was speaking and who he was speaking to. The class just stared at me and
asked how I knew that. I told them I’m a huge Shakespeare fanatic and I knew
the show because I was in the show in high school. They all thought it was
cool, I got called a nerd though by the bishop (In a joking matter of course
hahaha ) Hey if liking Shakespeare makes me a nerd, what evs. I will gladly be
a nerd!
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