Action jam packed week
Well we're out of hot water. I was just casually taking a shower when suddenly the water went FREEZING COLD and that's all it takes for me to nope right on into my clothes to check the gas tanks outside the flat that I assume are the culprits for depriving me of a good start to my morning. I looked at them a little bit, squinted even, and poked a valve or two before deciding I had no idea what I was doing, so I called the mission office and gave them some info before they told me it would most likely take a couple of days to get the gas refilled. And that's fantastic, because it's only the last couple of days that it's started to get really hot outside, so NOT taking a shower isn't really an option. But it was considered.
Besides that it was a good week. Last p-day we went to the branch mission leaders house and played games and stuff. He and Elder Rossi played that Magic: The Gathering card game and me and his daughter played a super watered-down version of Dungeons and Dragons called Hero Quest, I got through one mission but the next one she gave me the hardest quest in the manual so I didn't last very long because I was playing by myself, as a wizard, which was the worst character for combat because he's supposed to sit in the back and cast spells and stuff. Bummer.
Tuesday we helped a member in the ward paint a fence for a couple of hours. The next day we polished a car for a less active member who's pretty old and can't do much himself. Thursday we went to our investigator's house, and she was doing some house cleaning and showed us a long bow and an accordion she had found among some junk. I wish I had a picture but I didn't have my camera :(. Friday we went to dedicate the home of the old lady who was seeing...things in her home, that I was talking about last week. Then we went and gave a member a blessing because she's got all kinds of medical problems the doctors are only just starting to diagnose. That night we had a baptism for a little girl, not one of our investigators or anything, just a member of the branch already. The parents invited some non members to come, a few of which happen to be a couple of our investigators, so overall we had 6 nonmembers come, 2 of which are part of a part-member family with a less active dad that we've been teaching and set a BD with the son and plan to with the wife this week, and 2 were a couple of our keenest investigators and and the other 2 were a couple former investigators previous missionaries had taught.
It went really well, even the former investigators invited us to come around sometime. They were dropped because the husband does a lot of stuff with the youth for the SDA church, so simply because of his ties to that church he couldn't commit to joining a different one. But we're excited and our investigators who were there liked it a lot and the spirit was really strong.
Saturday we set a baptismal date with a YSA age investigator. We had a discussion about the 10 commandments, and he asked about the 1st and 2nd commandments, about only worshiping one God and not worshiping idols, and what happens to all those people who didn't know about God and only worshiped what they had been taught or had done with what they knew. So we told him about how those without the law can't be condemned by it since they're not aware of it. Then it evolved into a discussion about "truth" and what is "truth" and how truth is eternal, unchanging, and isn't subjective to people just because they're from a different religion, country, etc.
Then Elder Hausia is super bold and asks "Do you believe what we teach you is true?" And our investigator only takes a couple seconds before saying "I do." Thing is, he's never read much of the Book of Mormon (on his own, at least), he's never been to church and he hasn't really prayed but somehow he knows what we teach is true. We committed him to baptismal date, but he doesn't have a religious background so he's still unsure of baptism is something he should do, so we told him he needs to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it and that's how he'll come to feel baptism is right. That night we were supposed to do service for some less active members but they just ended up having a BBQ and feeding us. Then we went to a SDA-run activity and played volleyball with heaps of Polynesians. Me and Elder Rossi were the only palangi (tongan for white people) there. But it was really fun, and don't worry, we had permission to go.
Sunday was good, I gave a talk about how Christ has made me the person today, and talked about how three things Christ did (and does) shaped me into who I am, and that is 1. He established a church, restored it through a prophet, and blessed the world with the priesthood, 2. He taught His gospel, which, as I've followed has always improved the quality of my life, and 3. He accomplished the Atonement, through which I have felt it's healing and strengthening power and has helped me feel the love the Savior has towards me, which has affected my desire to serve Him. I started by saying I wasn't giving my talk to them as Elder Cummings, the missionary to give a happy-go-lucky rosy talk about how great the gospel is, but Brother Calvin Cummings, someone who grew up in the gospel and has his own personal experiences in the gospel so that people wouldn't feel I was obligated to say certain things just because I'm a missionary, but because I have a personal testimony. Overall I think it went pretty good. So yeah, that's our week, I'll attach a couple pictures we took from this lookout in Atherton.
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