October 14, 2013

It has been a pretty exciting week! The other day I ran over a squirrel with our minivan. That was a neat experience. I had my first crash on my bike and it rained for 4 straight days!

We were driving back from a meeting on a two lane road through a cool area with tons of trees. It was a nice October day and the weather was splendid. Then I see a squirrel up the road on the other lane. There was a car coming fast at it so it decided to come my way... RIP. That was the first time I've hit an animal with a car and it was pretty gross (haha). It’s been raining for 4 straight days and we've been in a continuous state of getting soaked, drying off, and then repeating. There are several small wooden bridges in our area and thanks to the rain, they are pretty slippery. I slid on one and had my first crash (haha). Don’t worry - the bike is fine! Also Elder Seely did an "over the handle bars" crash right into the mud. It just happened to be right next to a super busy road and everyone probably saw it. The other Elders crashed as well (haha).

We have done a lot of tracting this past week. It’s been raining, so the hope was that people would let us in because they feel bad. Also, tons of people are off work because of the government shut down and we were hoping that would increase the teaching opportunities. That wasn't really the case. It has been really good practice for the both of us. Tracting is great because we can evaluate and get better at each door. We had some funny stories and we found a couple of new investigators.

Elder Miles - looking good!

One night it was raining and we had been tracting for almost two hours with not much luck. We were about 5 minutes from needing to head back home. I had the impression we needed to pray. After praying we knocked a couple more houses and still got nothing. Then as we were about to leave we saw one house with a TV on inside. We decided to knock one last door. We ended up with a new investigator and came back the next day and taught her another lesson. It was a great experience and testimony builder on following the spirit and the power of prayer. We also tracted into another family from Syria who we taught the first discussion to on the door step. When we got to the first vision he said "keep going! This is so exciting!" They loved it so much they agreed to be baptized right there! Then we asked them when we could stop by again to bring them an Arabic Book of Mormon. He said it would have to be the next day because they were moving to New Jersey in a couple days. Bummer. We took them the book and they were really excited about it. They had gone on mormon.org, read the pamphlet we gave them, and they said when they get to New Jersey they are going to go to a Mormon church. We are going to refer them to some lucky missionaries there pretty soon (haha).

Last night we knocked on a door and some lady yelled "Who is it" through the door. We told her "It’s the missionaries!". She then told us to go away and that she wasn't interested. I told her that what we have to share would bless her and her family’s lives so much. In response she yelled back "What would make me the happiest right now is if you would leave." (haha). The day before that, an older African American guy answered the door. We were being friendly and asking how his day had been. Then I noticed a big happy birthday balloon behind his head, so I asked whose birthday it was. He didn't like that. He said "Why are you being all inquisitive and lookin in my house!?" We ended up talking for awhile longer but he wasn't interested.

-Elder Miles