Faith Lessons and Running from an Angry Woman

October 1, 2012

Dear Familia,

Glad you got that flash drive. Those tubes we light on fire for the faith analogy are tea bags. You have to have the right kind though or you will burn your hand (see email from April-ish when we did it with Delilah and I was testing different bags). Bigelow tea has the right kind, a few others too but that is the most common. And those weren't marshmallows in the young men's activity, they were nerf darts, much better.

Nothing new on the leadership change yet, but we got a little bit of a dry run this week as Sister Greenburg got admitted to the hospital late Saturday night so the Greenburgs weren't there and people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off but then Pres. Kauffman (from the mission presidency) showed up and took control. This has been two weeks in a row that he has been here so a new theory has come up as to an interim Branch President. So we will see what happens.

This week was kind of slow until Thursday. We had our interviews with President Calderwood and it was really good. After that we went to go look some people up in the 40's (projects) and we knocked on a door. Nothing. Knock twice. Nothing. Knock three times. "WHO'S ****** KNOCKING MY ****** DOOR?!?!?" and as soon as the first angry noise comes to our ears Elder Denton just takes off almost cartoon-esk down the hall, leaving me dazed and confused, and realizing that I am now standing alone at a door with a very angry woman coming towards it so I start running and trying to catch Elder Denton, oh I had a good laugh once we get back in the car.

On Friday we had two surprise member presents, which was nice. First we went and visited a less active member and she had a friend there. He is a fashion designer in Manhattan who also teaches models how to walk. Pretty flamin but a really nice guy. Then after that we went to our dinner appointment and a friend (also a former investigator) showed up and so we taught him too. Doesn't look like much will come from either but we will see what happens.

Saturday was a pretty good day. We met with Luis and with his 11 year old son Luis and we had a good lesson with them. They both promised to come to church. Then we met with Rosario. We had kind of given up hope on her because she just could not wrap her mind around anything we were trying to teach her. So we thought, what is a lesson in the Book of Mormon that was made for the poor and uneducated? Thank you Alma. We read the seed analogy to her and it just clicked. You could see the total change of understanding in her and she was loving it. We are going to try and see her again this week and see how she is going.

On Sunday Ari pretty much dropped us, which was disheartening after all the miracles in finding and teaching him. He said that he is really happy with the progress he is making in his church right now and it would be too hard to change. We were able to meet with Mariluz for the first time in a few weeks and she has actually been reading which was a pleasant surprise. Once again it turned into Elder Denton teaching while I try to keep the kids from blowing up. They are super good kids, really nice and smart, but they just have so much energy. So it is going to be hard to teach her effectively, we are going to have to get creative.

We also had a chance to talk to Luis and Luis because they didn't show up at church. Mom and Sister were in Pennsylvania all Saturday and into Sunday so it was a guy's night at their house -- well those two and the seven year old brother and they stayed up late watching tv and forgot to set the alarm in the morning. Yay guys day!

It was a pretty fun week though. Good times and good progress.

Well I think that's about it for this week.

Love you all,

Elder Pearce