Prior to coming to Arizona I was expecting no clouds, no rain, for 2
years. Wrong. It rains so much here it's ridiculous. The past 2 weeks
it's probably rained a little every single day. I have never
understood the term "desert". "A dry, barren area of land, especially
one that is covered with sand, that is characteristically desolate,
waterless, and without vegetation." says New Oxford American
Dictionary. Hmmm...interesting. I expirienced probably the worst storm
I've been in (besides China shouts to Newman) last Tuesday. Holy. I'll
send A FEW pictures. Can't wait to show you guys the videos in a year
haha. IT WAS RIDICULOUS. A few times I was thinking Second Coming,
I'll just leave it at that.
So tossing melancholy in the subject was kind of a stretch...mostly I
just needed another "m", but I made it work. Plus it makes me look
educated :D #SophisticatedDiction. We did have a tad bit of
"melancholy" on Thursday. It was kind of a slow week, people were
being flakey as usual, appointments were cancelling left and right. We
get to Thursday with absolutely nothing to do. It doesn't happen too
much on your mission...you always have less actives you can go see, or
formers you can contact, you can even clean up your area book/phone.
But nope, we did all that. We visited every person we knew to visit.
And it sucked..we literally sat around for a couple hours trying to
think of things we could possibly do to be effective. No luck, last
resort..tracting. We actually weren't going to go tracting at all
because it is basically 100% ineffective, but we were with Elder Smith
and Elder Argyle for lunch and they decided to help us out. This is
where the milagros start. We went and picked a random (super ghetto of
course) street, and went our separate ways. I kid you not, first house
we go up to, a guy walks out before we even get to the door and starts
talking to us. Super nice, his name is Omar, totally covered in tatts,
wearing a wife beater, classic. We talk to him a minute about his
beliefs, he tells us he is Catholic, so we talk a second about Jesus
Christ, and introduced him to The Book of Mormon. He gladly accepted
it. GLADLY, he was really happy, and told us to come back
Saturday...that he really needed us. While we were talking to Omar,
Elder Ruiz and Elder Smith were talking to a random dude on the street
named Demarcus, that apparently was talking to missionaries in Iowa,
but moved here and lost contact with them. He really wanted them to
come back and teach him too. Turns out he lives one street out of our
area...:( But he is awesome and wants to go to church really bad.
NEVER HAPPENS while tracting.
Sorry this is long...but it's worth it!! So we go back to visit Omar on Saturday
...not really knowing what to expect, people are always
sketchy. We knock on his door and he immediately answers and says "YOU
GUYS CAME!" With a huge smile on his face <3 I asked him if he read
any of The Book of Mormon and he said he did and that he loved it. We
had a little lesson with him, and it went super super well, we both
felt that we needed to ask him to be baptized, so we did, and he
gladly accepted. His baptismal date is September 12th. We asked if he
wanted to come to church with us and he said he really did! So we got
him a ride and guess what!? He came!! All three hours, dressed up and
everything. He paid attention the whole time, and loved every minute
of it. At the end we asked him if what he thought and he told us that
he kept getting the chills over and over. HECK YEAH MAN YOU KNOW WHAT
THAT IS. We are seeing him tomorrow to do another lesson, he was (as
the sister missionaries say) so prepared. Haha..it's an inside joke.
Yeah milagros. We also have about 4 families that are getting
reactivated right now, and we have been able to start meeting with all
of them and start teaching their families. A few of them have
unbaptized children. And they pretty much all showed up to church!!!
We met with one last night...and 2 of their kids want to get baptized,
so we set dates with them!!! We now have 4 dates which is
insane..since 2 weeks ago we had 0. #Blessed <3
So we had a pretty sucky week then a pretty freaking great week. It's
crazy how if we weren't having that horrible day with nothing to do,
we wouldn't have met Omar or Demarcus, it's awesome how things work
out.
I'll leave you with a few quotes from my boy Ronald Woods (our recent
convert)..Every time we go to his house he says something that makes
it's way to the books.
1."Joseph Smith would be spanking my brother Donald if he was here
right now." He really likes Joseph Smith.
2. (This one was in a prayer) "I can't wait to braid your hair God."
we are still working with him on how to say prayers...he likes to pray
to Joseph Smith..bad news hahaha. Good times.
Have a blessed week y'all. Few pictures comin your way.
Love, Elder Mitchell :')''''''
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