day 343
Zone Conference happened on Tuesday, the photos will be posted after all of the zones have finished (this week)
This week was a bit slow, rained all week until today. With this sort of weather, it's pretty difficult to find a house that'll let you in. I seems like everyone hibernates until the sun comes out.
Luckily, the day we really see the results of the week's work is always Sunday, when our primary goal is bringing people (investigators and less-active members) to church. This Sunday, we had 8 investigators, 3 of them for the first time.
We had an investigator who was going to be baptized this Saturday (Jan. 26). Elder Gondin had already taught him a year ago and he had also gotten close to baptism that time around! It seems like he has some sort of disorder, maybe high-functioning autism(?). He lives alone and is about to graduate from college.
Because he'd been following through with commitments (reading the Book of Mormon, prayer, church, etc.) we decided to present the baptismal forms on Saturday. Last week the problem was that he didn't want to have the baptismal meeting at 7PM because he wanted to go to a Catholic mass like he does every Saturday. We reemphasized the message about the restoration of the gospel and he understood better, and agreed to change his priorities.
But Saturday, we had a problem I've never seen before. He's totally ready, and understands perfectly everything we presented, but he adamantly refuses to provide *any* personal information, even full name and date of birth!
He told us how last year, other missionaries (not from the Church of Jesus Christ) came and also asked for personal information and basically stole his identity and he had to go through some sort of judicial/bureaucratic process to work it out. And that they bought stuff in his name, etc.
Which would mean they got bank/card/government id info, if this really did happen.
We tried to explain the limited nature of the information we were going to need, the purpose that the records have for him in the Church, and how it would be necessary for him to provide the information if he really wanted to be baptized.
He just said, for example, "it's not because I don't trust you or anything, but after that happened, I just can't give out information, I've already made my decision."
So... that was really weird. Maybe someday he'll suddenly decide to fill out the forms.
In the meantime, we'll be working more closely with other people.
Here, the new church hours have proven to be an inspired change. Before, the average was 45-50 at sacrament meeting in T. Neves, these last three weeks have had 65-70 everytime. Not sure how it is at home but as I remember, it already got pretty packed depending on the week.
Questions:
Does the ward/stake have missionaries right now? Do you have dinner with them?
Dad, do you still ever have contact with your mission president?
I forgot the other questions, they'll be here next time.
Until next week,
Spencer
Comments
Post a Comment