This week went by super fast! That is how all the weeks have felt like since I got to the mission field. A couple of things have happened this week. On Thursday I had my first exchange. An exchange is when two sets of Elders switch companions; and usually you switch with district Leaders. So our district leader and Elder Curtis went to the District Leaders area and left me with the District Leaders junior companion Elder Hancock in our area. I got the opportunity to drive! We also had a blitz in one of the sisters area. So basically for the Blitz we just contacted some referrals and talked with everyone we could and got some more referrals. Both of our Spanish is iffy so it was an adventure when we had to speak Spanish with people! But it went pretty well, we got a lot of referrals and a lot of potentials for the sisters. Then we were in our area and just contacted a bunch of people and then visited one of the members that is in our ward that lives in our area. This exchange made me realize that my Spanish is coming a long a lot better than I give myself credit for. When I am with Elder Curtis I just rely on him most of the time and don't even try to speak Spanish so it was good for me to get the chance to open my mouth and give it a try.
This week we also met the Hernandez family. We gave them the restoration and they accepted BD's. We texted them and invited them to church on Sunday. They sent us a text back and said that they love to have friends in their house to talk about the word of God but they didn't want us to try and change their ways. They are very serious about another church. It was hard to hear this because they had a spiritual answer after we gave them the restoration lesson. But I don't think that we were clear enough with them when we invited them to be baptized that that actually means leaving their church and joining ours. So it was a good learning experience in two ways. One we need to be pretty direct with our message. And two, there is people that are going to have spiritual experiences and decide that they don't want to do anything about it and it's going to be hard to hear that as a missionary. But it is a part of the work. Elder Curtis said that it never gets easy to hear someone say they don't want to listen to us anymore.
Also this week none of our investigators came to church. We have so much potential right now but none of them are willing to make it to church. The people here don't realize the importance of attending church weekly; even after they are baptized and I think this Is a big reason there is almost more inactive members in the wards then active members. This is something I want to learn how to emphasize as a missionary. It will probably take some time for me to figure it out but I will figure it out.
We also are now a two man apartment. On Friday the elders that had been living with us moved out. They moved to a more convenient apartment with some other elders. It was a little sad to see them go. Even though we see them quite often during the week. Elder Eskelson and I had just barely started running in the mornings. But I bought some exercise equipment at Walmart and now we have tons of room to work out in the mornings. We also have our own bathrooms and own closets. So we defiantly have a lot of extra room. We also don't have other people to keep us entertained. So to deal with this I had elder Curtis teach me how to play Pokémon! So whenever we have a little bit of down time we play Pokémon! I never thought that this was something I would do on my mission but anything can happen out here.
Elder Curtis has been helping me improve my teaching skills. One thing we have been doing is only teaching the first lesson through questions. It's actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. But it is so much more effective. Our investigators get so much more out of what we teach them if they teach themselves and don't just listen to us preach at them. We've been teaching a lot of restoration lessons lately so hopefully we can help those investigators stick and get them baptized. This was a good week for me. Most of my feelings of inadequacy have gone away. This is the Lord's work. Anything is possible through Him.
Love Elder Hurst
The new, roomier apartment
Missionary Planner
Missionary Car
Elder Falcon
Elder Eskelson
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