Week 89 - Zumba

Hello Everyone! Hope you are having a blessed day

This week has been faster than last. It is now 2 weeks in Brawley! The temperatures are slowly rising, but we're not yet in June. June-September is really when it gets bad, so it's just around the corner. We'll be ok though. Thank goodness for A/C

The past 2 P-days, every morning at 8:30 we drive down for Zumba at the Stake Center! Last week I was a little skeptical going in, but after 1 session of Zumba, I was converted. It was just a lot of fun! We are learning more dance moves which will be fun to have when I return home. I'm still new, and have been having a hard time keeping up with all these old ladies, but I think I'm getting better at least. There is a lady that also puts the Zumba dance session on some Facebook/Instagram live, which I haven't yet found, but I'll include it when I do.

The work has been good. I feel like we are making some progress with our goals. We have 3 people who may be close to Baptism, but there are still certain obstacles in the way, or things holding them back. Pray for our friends Yolanda, Julio, and Brody. They are the 3 that would be closest to baptism at this point.

- I mentioned Yolanda last week. Her main thing is coming to church. She takes care of her son who is disabled and that takes much of her time. She's normally available in the mornings while her son sleeps until 11 or so, but on Sunday her son woke up very early so she was occupied with him.

- Julio is the husband of a recent convert. We don't know exactly why he's not baptized, and he comes to church every week. We went over the other day and he told us about how he's trying to get a green card. There's a whole process behind it that includes an interview, but for some reason they don't always do the interview. Basically, he told his wife a couple weeks ago that if he got his green card without an interview he would get baptized. Well now it looks like he might actually get his green card soon without an interview, but time will tell. They were both laughing a lot telling the story to us. We'll make sure he gets baptized for the right reasons though.

- Brody is the grandson of some less active members who are currently his legal guardians. They talked about him getting baptized sometime, and we were going to go over to their house, but they had to reschedule. If we did talk about it, the grandparents would have to start coming to church more often. I haven't met Brody, and he's a young kid, but baptism could be a good thing for him. We just need to meet with them to learn more.

There was a crazy couple that we ran into at Walmart last week. She was a member, he isn't, but she has since gone inactive and I think they both have some sort of drug addictions. Anyway, he really wants to get baptized into the church, but the interaction was really weird. He basically told us about some of our beliefs that he likes, such as Heavenly Mother, although he said that Heavenly Mother is the earth itself. He also told us that he is a prophet, and might've said that he's John the Baptist. He wanted our number and he said he wanted to talk sometime. He called us later, but kept going on about random things for like 30 minutes. He is not all there, and we weren't sure what to do with him. We ended the call because he just kept on talking and then started texting us. Here is some of the conversation:

 

 

Anyway, we didn't know what to do with him, and we knew we couldn't baptize him, so we just blocked him. He will be taught in the next life.

Went on a lot of exchanges this week too. One with Elder Mickel, and another with Elder De Osambela. Both good guys

- Elder Mickel and I both knew each other from the beginning of our missions. He's one transfer behind me and we got to know each other well around the beginning of 2022. We haven't seen each other since then a lot, so it is fun to be in a district with him again. We had a good hard working exchange and taught a lot of lessons. We went to the Mall for some finding, and had like 3 good conversations and got some phone numbers. One lady talked about how she used to live in Utah and really misses it. She was interested in coming to church.

Yesterday I went with Elder De Osambela who is in our district, and in our 4 man apartment. They also cover Brawley, but focus on Spanish. We met a couple cool people including this family who were out in their front yard. I'll be honest, when we saw them, I did not want to go over there. It had been a rough day and I just didn't feel like it. Because of that, we almost didn't but then just decided to do it anyway I guess. They're a Spanish family and we ended up reading like the whole Introduction to the Book of Mormon with them in Spanish. De Osambela did a lot of the talking, but I helped too, or at least tried to.

 

Best highlight of the week was meeting this young couple, Dane and Lacey. They graduated in 2018 so they're the same age as my brother, but they're really cool. Dane is the son of someone who used to be taught by the missionaries. Last transfer the missionaries were at her house while Dane and Lacey were there, and Lacey asked them if they could bless they're new home. So they went over there and did a blessing, and Lacey wanted them to come back! Now in this transfer, we were able to set up a time. They are also down the street from our Bishop so he came with us, and we just got to know them. It was a really good visit, and they are just so cool! I feel like I haven't met very many normal people on my mission who are humble. It seems people are either humble/willing to talk and crazy, or they are more well off and prideful but also normal. They also have a 9 month old son and are sort of church hopping. At the end of our time getting to know them, we told them that we share messages about Jesus Christ and would love to come back. We set a time for Thursday. We hope it goes well! I'm honestly scared in a way. It is easy to teach people like members, or people who are a little bit more crazy, but Dane and Lacey are pretty sharp. But they're so elect. We also invited them to church this Sunday because I will be speaking.

I didn't actually get any pictures this week of me and my actual companion, Elder Creasy, but here is one from last week when we went to Chilis on our P-day right before I got a haircut. He's the one in the white shirt next to me.

Well I think that is all for this week. I don't really have much of a spiritual thought this week, but I will have an extra good one next week by including my talk. Love you all!

- Elder Wride