Hey World!
I'm going to try and actually write this time! It'll probably be just a bullet point type thing again, but we'll see :D
We all went to bed at like 8pm--we were exhausted. The next morning, Sis. Quijano woke me up saying it was 7:30am. Woops. That's when we were supposed to be at breakfast downstairs. Typical Sis. Denton. We then went to training and met our companions and found out where we were going!
My comp is Sis. Longmore from Riverton, UT. She has been out almost 10 months. We are whitewashing this area--elders were removed after being evicted from their apartment for being too loud. We drove for 5 hours to get here. We were following Tom's directions (the GPS) and all of a sudden I saw a sign that said "Welcome to West Virginia." Crap. We decided to just keep driving and then saw a sign that said "Welcome to Maryland." Double crap. So, we had dinner in MD at a place called Penn Alps. We did end up in Harrisburg, where we were supposed to. We waited for our luggage and then headed another 45 minutes to Mountville.
We got to our brand new, 3rd floor apartment at about 11:30pm. It is beautiful and it's great that it is brand new, but brand new doesn't mean stocked. We had 0 food and a couple of boxes of pots and pans. Our beds weren't even put together! The mattresses were leaning against the wall. And no toilet paper. Just sayin. Luckily, I found some 48 hour kits that had toilet paper in them, so all was well.
The next day, we scoured the area book for information. Turns out the Elders didn't keep records. Great. So we've been working like crazy in this area to find out anything and everything about the investigators. We had two recent converts that we didn't even have a confirmation date for, but we're working with one of them now. The other we can't get ahold of yet--she's been out of town.
Wednesday, our first real day, we called Bro. McBride, who we had met in Harrisburg. We asked him who the bishop was and he said we could meet him at the church that night at an eagle court of honor and go to institute in the meantime. Sweet! So we met the bishop and as soon as he realized we were in his area, we were introduced to YeYang. She is awesome! She had a friend in China who was LDS--a foreign exchange student. She spent the summer of 08 in her home and went to church all summer. She now wants to go to BYU, so went to mormon.org to find Bishop Kenley. She wants to be baptized! How awesome is that!? Because she has no Christian background, we are really starting from scratch. We taught her for the first time Saturday night (though she came to church and the RS Broadcast last week). We said we'd start with a prayer and she said she didn't know how to pray. When we said we end in the name of Jesus Christ, she asked who He is. While explaining, we said "Savior" and she asked who He was. It's really cool, though, to teach these basic things I've always known. It's amazing to see her be taught for the first time that there was a God who came to the earth 2000 years ago and performed miracles and suffered for your sins. Like--it's a lot to take in, but she's loving it! Last night when we met with her, she said the closing prayer and in it, told Heavenly Father she believed us and knew that what we were teaching was true. So cool!
While tracting, we met Ben and Cat. Cat is a Jewish Catholic who is now a Protestant Vegan. Ben is Protestant. They let us in and we taught the whole first lesson! We went back this week and they fed us a delicious vegan meal and we taught the Plan of Savlation. Ben asked a lot of great questions and we asked if he would be baptized when he knew these things were true. He said if he converts, he'll convert. We then went to schedule another meeting and they dropped the bomb. They said that they felt two meetings is enough for now and we'd gvien them a lot to chew on, but that we could check up on them. We will most DEFINITELY check up on them. I hope beyond hope that he really does just want to study it out for himself and is not just trying to send us off. They are an awesome couple!
On 9/30, it was POURING all day! We had a little pond and puddle in our backyard that became a lake. I have pictures to prove it. I didn't have rainboots or a coat or an umbrella, so we stayed inside and worked on the area book (which REALLY needed work). As we were about to go out, we got a call from our district leaders. President said we had to remain inside the rest of the evening because of a tornado warning. WHAT?!!? Tornados in Pennsylvania!? So...we didn't leave the house all day except to take out the trash. We did get the area book organized though!
While tracting Saturday, we met two more potential investigators. One is Brian. He was just released from Rehab and is doing the 12-step program at another church. He seemed interested and took a BoM, so we're going to give him the info for the 12-step at our church :D We also met Andrea, the mother of 3, who was interested in learning and took a BoM. She is friends with one of our ward members, so that was a great help, too!
Well, hopefully this novel makes up for the shortness of the last two weeks! I probably forgot tons, so ask questions. I try and write exciting things on a post-it note throughout the week.
Love you all!
Sister Denton
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