Happy fourth of July! This week we were able to get a lot done and at the same time see our results kind of flop a little bit. We were able to teach a single mom, Samantha, a couple times and she told us she's determined to get baptized into our church she just needs to be sure it's the right thing, we taught her about how she can gain a witness from the Holy Ghost by reading the Book of Mormon so now she's a lot more committed to reading it. We've been trying to teach her for a month or two now but she being a single mom it's hard to find an adult male to come with us so we can get inside the house and sit down with her. Tonight we're planning on setting a baptismal date with her so we'll see how that goes.
Tuesday we had zone meeting, which is always fun, there's this senior couple Elder and Sister Clyde, who always bring refreshments and stuff so they brought some cake and bagels and things. We door knocked into this lady my companion knew from his first area, she's not a member, although her partner is and so we talked with her a while, hopefully she'll be keen on taking the lessons. We tried saving kilometres on our car by biking around the neighbourhood most of the day but we easily used more than we saved when we went to pick up dinner from the members who had signed up to feed us. They lived up in the corner of our area in a really forested area so we got lost like three times trying to find their house.
Wednesday and Thursday we biked pretty much all day because we were just about out of k's to use on our car. So we were able to get a ton of contacts this week and a couple potential investigators, looking forward to see the results of that. When we were door knocking Thursday morning this guy drives up and calls out to us, I thought he was going to try to tell us the "truth" about Joseph Smith (which has happened many times) but really he wanted us to visit him, he told us he had the impression to turn down this random street that didn't lead anywhere and saw us. He figured it was no coincidence so he invited us to come see him. We were meant to see him the next day but as we were approaching his house we saw him pulling out of his driveway, luckily we left a card with our number and he called back and apologized and set another appointment for today.
We taught Nephi a couple more times, he's pretty much ready. We taught Jude as well, but we'll have to move his date again because they're still not coming to church. Plus we taught him about tithing and he doesn't want to pay it because he doesn't think it's fair. So that could be a problem. We had an investigator drop us, which really stinks because he seemed really keen. Me and Elder Smith taught James a week or two ago, he prayed at the end of the first lesson, which never happens, and we thought he was going to progress really fast but when we went by to see him for the second time, he came out and told us he was never interested in the Mormon church and he admitted that he was just trying to manipulate us into coming to this course he attends where they talk about realizing their self-potential or something like that, it's really weird. I was pretty miffed but we were still nice to him and all.
Guess I should also mention we got a mini missionary. He's just from South Brisbane but he's with us for a few days to see what missionary life is like. Yesterday we had to teach the gospel principles class because the Sister who was assigned for this week couldn't, because she wasn't feeling well, but she still came to class and was happy to sit with everyone else and kind of take over with her own comments and things. Sister Matila's a lovely Samoan but she often drags the lessons away so whoever's teaching has gotta try really hard to steer things back to the topic at hand before everyone gets carried away on whatever Sister Matila is saying. It's all good though, it's not a big deal. After church we went finding for a few hours, which was really productive with everyone being home. We visited one of our recent converts Anthony and shared a lesson with him about the temple. Afterwards as we were leaving we were telling him about how we wanted to go to an authentic American restaurant for the 4th of July, with it being a p-day, so he looked it up on his phone but apparently they're all in downtown Brisbane. Later he texted us about this other place in our area, so we'll see how that is.
The weather's generally been pretty cool, even a little chilly, except for the days we've spent finding most of the day, of course. Hope everything is going well with all of you. Probably one of the biggest things to change about me on my mission is realizing how slack I was in the gospel before coming out. I wasn't magnifying my callings, I wasn't living up to my responsibilities with the right attitude, and I wasn't committing myself to growing in knowledge upon knowledge until coming out here. Each of us, when we're judged, are going to have to stand accountable before God about how much we truly magnified the gospel in our lives rather than just going through the motions. Love you all and talk to you next week.
Elder Cummings
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