Working Everywhere

Family and Friends,

Well this week was interesting for sure.  To give a small breakdown, we are now teaching an evangelical pastor/priest guy, we're teaching a super firm Jehovah's witness woman who's like 60 or 70 years old, we had a zone meeting this week where we were on a bus for almost 3 hours trying to get back, when the bus ride should have only been 10 minutes, and we taught about 40 people in English at a company that teaches English called Wizard. 

Last week I forgot to talk about a Pastor that we taught a little bit.  He talked with the other missionaries as they were going to their area, and then they passed him onto us.  He seems kinda interested actually, we talked for about 30 minutes about how the church works and everything, and he said that he would even consider leaving his church to someone else as a pastor and he would join our church if he got an answer.  We havent visited him in a while, since he didn't go to church these past 2 weeks. 

We're also teaching a young woman named who came to church this past Sunday.  She is the granddaughter of a very old woman who's very firm in the Jehovah's witness faith, and she tried to convince us that she's right about 30 times, about donating blood, about women praying with their faces covered, and other stuff like that.  But the young woman is receptive, and came to church Yesterday, and loved it. 

On Saturday, we had a very unique experience.  We were invited to talk about the church to about 40 people at a company/school called Wizard- IN ENGLISH!  We showed up there, and we were told they would have a ton of questions for us.  So, after we sat down and introduced ourselves, we asked if they had questions, and basically nobody asked us anything, we were kinda in silence for a second, then a member who was there asked us about what we do and everything, so we began to talk about what we do.  Then he asked about the Book of Mormon, and we pretty much ended up teaching the entire 1st lesson in English.  Boy, that was weird.  First time I've ever taught in English, or really had a conversation about the church in English in a long time.  We let everyone know where the church is and what time we have meetings and such, but not too many people got interested about the church unfortunately.  However, we go back tomorrow night to talk with a different group of students at night.  The school/company leaders told us that we could come basically any time we'd like to teach them English, or to talk about the church to a big group of people.  So of course we're gonna take advantage of that and go back frequently to let people know about the church. 

On Thursday, we had a zone meeting, and on the way back, we got the wrong bus, long story short, the bus had the same name and number as the bus we wanted, but it was on the wrong side of the terminal.  So, we ended up going on about a 2 or 3 hour bus ride waiting for the bus to get back to the original terminal, then we got on the right bus back, and finally got back in our area around 3pm, and missed our lunch.  However, as we visited our first appointment after that, they were eating lunch at the time and invited us to eat with them.  How could we turn them down, we were hungry, and it was a tender mercy for sure.

Mom,
Thanks so much again for you wonderful email.  I loved the insight on prayer, I'm trying to get better at that too.  What challenges me the most?  I'd have to say that its really trying to follow the spirit while on the street, trying to always have him with me as a companion so that I can talk with the right people, and say what I should.  What makes me the most happy?  Our house is awesome.   We now have me, my companion Elder S & we get along great by the way, and there's Elder A and Elder S.  Yep, that same Elder S that I was in a trio in Itaporanga, my 1st area.  He's awesome, and really funny.  He's also finishing his mission this transfer, so I'll see him going home.  What I've really read in the scriptures that has helped me was really this past week I studied up D&C 121 and 122 as I was going through some patience issues.  The small area is growing slowly but surely, 2 Sundays ago there were 9 people, and yesterday there were 19, so its getting better! 

Well that just about sums up this past week, hope you guys have a great one, and talk to you next week!!!

Abraços,

Elder Coon