Monday, November 18, 2013

Jumping out of the Boat

                                       It has been another great week! The time has been flying by this week! It seems like it was literally just yesterday I was pulling up to the library and it said "closed for veterans day". This week has definitely been slow in lessons. A lot of people had fallen through. This week we were out tracting, and we knocked on a very inspired door. We knocked on it and the lady answered "Oh are you here to see Rob?" and me and my companion were like "Who is Rob?" and it turns out that it was the house of a potential investigator we have. He came to church with Laura Chew when she came to town. He has been needing a pick me up lately so we got together with Rob and the Storys and spent the evening having dinner and doing activities at their house! It was a wonderful experience! We have had plenty of time for tracting this week! And it can be pretty humorous becauause people here hate using their front door, and sometimes prefer you to use their back door. We knocked on this one door, and of course it was an older man who didn't want to talk to us anyway! We knocked the second time and he got up out of his chair and came to the door. When he tried to open the door, the door slammed into him when it opened. He then angrily rejected us. We were out knocking doors yesterday, and this guy came to the door and was like "Do you guys realize the vikings game is on?". For a second I thought he was trying to be funny, but he was totally serious! And of course I knew the Seahawks were playing them that day and I responded "Well I'm a seahawks fan" he then told me the score and was still really angry with us for interupting his game. While out tracting some older lady invited us to come to St. Josephs catholic mass they were holding that night. So we took her up on the invite. When we were on our way to mass we went and got out neighbors Cindy and Peter (who are catholic) to take us there so we knew what was going on. We knocked on her door and she answered thinking we were just coming to drop by. But I promptly told her "hey were on our way to mass" she replied "Why are you guys going to Massachussets?". We then told her we were going to the Catholic Mass at five. So it motivated her to take us to her church. It was definitely an interesting service. It is always interesting to see how other churches do their service. Of course we got stared at the whole time by all the old people around us. But it was a fun night to go check out another church!
                                     It was a great day at church yesterday! I definitly love pot luck sundays! Darryl the older man in our ward has been living here for like forty years. I always make it a game on sunday to try and get him to admit its cold outside. So far I haven't been successful with that! Everytime he always calls it "Chilly" outside. I will definitely get him one of these times! It was way nice outside this week! We got in the high thirties and the low fortys. But it will now officially start getting cold! Yesterday our investigator Donnada showed up, and pulled me and Elder Anderson outside to help her. We realized that she got to the door and dropped her dinner she had brought to the pot luck. So we helped her pick it up. After the meeting many people were saying how sorry they were for her. But she told everyone that she had learned something from it! She said that she should have asked for help with the door instead of trying to do things by herself. I was bery humbled to hear that. If it were me who had dropped it I would have been kicking myself all day for it, and feeling sorry the whole time. But she moved forward and learned a lesson from it! Donnada is back on date for february 7th, 2014. This week in district meeting we had a training on "Jumping out of the boat". We watched a video of Bednar speaking about the story of when Jesus calls Peter to walk on the water. Peter was safely inside the boat. But Peter fastened his eyes on the Savior and began to walk on the water. Peter probably had no idea he could do such a thing! But when the savior prompted him and he focused his eyes on the savior he was able to walk on the water. Us as missionaries are sometimes safe in the boat of a "lesson plan". And sometimes the holy spirit prompts us to "jump out of the boat" or in other words leave our lesson plan and follow his promptings. After learning this at district meeting I have had many opportunities to jump out of the boat. I will be sitting in a lesson and the spirit will prompt me to take it somewhere else. And when I follow these promptings we teach exactly what the investigator needs. I hope that we can all have an opportunity to "Jump out of the boat" and take those steps of faith that God needs us to take. I hope you all have a good week!

love, Elder Barber

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