Hey y'all

September 23, 2008

So this last week was a good one. My companion has tendonitis in her arm as of a few weeks ago, and has been having stomach problems, so between the two, she hasn't been feeling the best all the time. So we stayed inside most of the day friday because of that, and we started off with kindof a slow week, but it actually turned out really good. So to report on how the 2x4 contacting has been going, since a couple of you asked, it's great! We haven't done it a whole lot yet, but when we do, it's great. It gets us away from the same old same old of how we contact and what we say. We've used the "do you know who Thomas S. Monson is?" a few times, and also once I asked this black kid sitting in his car on his work break in the Wal-Mart parking lot, "do you know what the gold plates are?" It was great. You make them actually think, and they know then that you know something they don't know. Love that feeling. It's made contacting a lot more exciting when we hit people with a 2x4. :)
So a few of the people we are working with:
Alicia is first. Alicia (pronounced Alee-see-a) is this awesome woman (turns 30 in Nov.) who is totally into the Church. She loves it. She was found by the sisters back in Feb. and they started teaching her after she announced to them, "Y'all, I need to be saved!" She's wanted to be baptized for a long time, but there have been a lot of things she's needed to take care of. One of which was putting in her due time in jail. Not for anything really really bad, but she turned herself in a couple months ago, with the sisters in tow, and spent 22 days in jail. She is so funny because she talks about when she was in jail like it was nothing. She is a crack up. She is a great person with a great heart and knows the church is true. She has 2 kids, Ariana (9) and a little boy named Amario (16 months). She is a great mother. She is currently living with Roland, who is Amario's father, We are teaching him as well, and he is a crack up. We love their family. Roland has a lot of things in his life to take care of as well, if he were to get baptized, and we're hoping that he eventually has the desire. Lately he's been participating more in the lessons, and he even has been reading the BOM more. This is good. They just need to get married. Except Alicia doesn't want to marry him because he's not willing to change, but she says lately that she has seen small improvements in him, so she still has hope. But she is still on probation til June 7, 2009 (which got cut back from like 2 years to just 9 months, cuz she turned herself in I think, so this is a blessing), which is the day she is planning on getting baptized. She comes to church with her family every sunday, and is practically a member. They are really fun people. And she reminds me a lot of Rosanna, actually (which Rosanna already knows..;). She's great. So that is Alicia.
Then there is Sandy. We just found Sandy the other night in the Kroger parking lot. She is probably in her 60s, and half her family is Mormon. She knows a lot about the church because of that, and because she says her cousin Marcus has been "working on her" for a long time. :) I thought that was funny. She has done family history work for years and loves it. She used to be visited by elders some years back, and would feed them dinner every week for a year or so. She says the only reason she is not Mormon is because her daughter-in-law is Catholic, so her son is too now I guess, and she doesn't want to create tension there I guess. So we ended up teaching her just on sunday, and she is very familiar with a lot of the other Christian religions, and our makes sense to her, and she committed to pray about the BOM. She has had a lot of trials, including losing 2 of her children--one to suicide after rape, and her son to murder--so we are really excited to teach her the plan of Salvation. We told her a little bit about where we go after we die and how temple work plays in, and she loves it. She is just thirsting for peace, it's exciting. She is getting surgery in a couple weeks on her back, so that might be a little set-back in getting her baptized, but it won't stop us! :)
Arden and Judy are an elderly couple who the sisters started teaching a few months ago, and even set a baptismal date with Arden, but then Judy got all freaked out about the thought of getting baptized again (she's had a bad experience getting baptized in another church), so they dropped the missionaries. But we went and visited them the other day, and Judy wasn't there, which was actually a blessing, because we got to have a great talk with Arden and found out he wants to come to church and be baptized so bad, and wants to be a positive contributor to God's church (so awesome!) but he won't go against his wife's wishes. He knows it's true and loves the BOM (he sneaks into another room to read it when he can), and just wants to be baptized. So we are going to try to help Judy to want to come to church at least, just to see that it's a good place, etc.
So those are the main investigators we are working with right now. People are great in this area, I really like M'boro. I like that it's not so affluent. People are more humble and willing to listen. There's even a trailor park next to the train tracks. We found a new investigator right by them the other day, down fishin' in the river by the walkway (called the Greenway) that we go contacting on sometimes. His name is Lee. We gave him a BOM and told him about it and about Joseph Smith and the first vision (promptly before which the train noisily went by and interrupted, but the story continued after, and the spirit was there again, thank goodness), and he said he'll read it. Hopefully I'll be able to tell good things about how that goes when we teach him soon.
I didn't email yesterday cuz the internet was down here in the complex club house, where we live.
But I love you all and thank you so much for your prayers and thoughts and support!
Love, Sister Gurr
PS--By the way (for anyone in the Carnton ward..;) I realized that what I might have said in my email last week sounded like I was knocking the carnton ward; I wasn't! I love that ward and the members! I just wanted to clarify that. :)
PPS--Mom, could you send me an absentee ballot so I could vote? That would be great! Thank you, I love you!
Rosanna, thank you so much for your email, I love you and miss you too!!