Hey everyone!!
This week has had big ups and also big downs! But mostly ups! More bike problems… also spider problems?? but we had plenty of lessons and have 4 people on date for baptism! Very productive overall!
Tuesday
P-day! We started out by playing pickleball! Elder Hale and I challenged the older guys at the court next to us, and that was lots of fun! We then stayed at the church since Balls still didn’t have a bike… so we played scum (the card game) with the whole district, and Elder Ashby and Rahn joined in too later in! Then, we got a ride back to our apartment. We walked to the apartment next to ours and found a lady sitting on her porch, so we had like an hour-long discussion with her! She seemed interested-ish, and we gave her a BOM!
Wednesday
Zone conference! We hitched a ride with the Spanish elders… Balls finally got a new bike! Zone conference was awesome – President Loo talked a lot about obedience and how we can do a better job of inviting people to church. Then, we met with Kristina and dropped her cause she wasn’t really progressing and kept wanting to push off her baptism… 😭 then, we gave Gale, a recent convert, a blessing! She’s so sweet! 🥰 We then went to another lesson with Nathan! While we were in our lesson (it was outside on some benches), some guy walks up to us and starts yapping about how us missionaries are “novices” cause we’re so young and like how apparently we don’t know anything. He told us he was a “prophet” (I know, another one?) Then he started saying I was evil and God was disappointed in me?? Like uhhh alright buddy… 😆 Idek what bro was talking about but anyways eventually he finally went away and we could start our lesson… Nathan has a problem with drinking alcohol/beer and smoking, and he said every time he tries to quit, he just goes back to it! We talked about “burning the ships” (thanks Dad!), meaning basically getting rid of all escape paths. So on Wednesday, we’re going to throw away all of his cigarettes and alcoholic drinks and give him a blessing! Then, Sister Barfield took us out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant (my first one! It was so bussin too 😋)!
Thursday
Sooooo I put on my shoe using a shoehorn so I dont look too closely when putting on my shoes… and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move… and then I saw this BLACK THING crawling up my shoe and onto my leg and I FREAKED!! Literally Balls can tell you i looked like i was an tap dancer or something… i flung it onto the floor and SMASHED that thing with my other shoe… it was a spider! Then I saw the red hourglass shape on its belly – IT WAS A FLIPPING BLACK WIDOW! (Shown in the pictures..) 😱 So thank the Lord that thing was only ON my shoe and not IN it… i dont feel like being that missionary that goes to the ER in the first month… Ok so then, continuing on with our day… We had a lesson with a girl named Chandler, but she scheduled into work without telling us soooo no bueno… We went out to lunch, did some calls! Thennn as we were going to stop by a contact, my tire popped… well, not just popped, more like exploded… and it wrapped around my gears… so we were kind of stranded… so then the spanish elders picked us up, took us to a bike shop, where we got a “thorn-proof” tube for the tire.. then, THAT tire also went flat in about 10 minutes! What a scam… so we were stranded in the middle of our area.. we then got picked up by some other elders who took us to dinner! Then a member took us from that dinner to meet with Samuel! Then, we played some volleyball! 🏐
Friday
We started out the day by walking to the same bike shop (45 minute walk), and i got a new tire! Then we had a lesson with a Filipino guy (yayyy another asian!) He’s seemed interested, and we invited him to read the intro of the BOM and come to church! We then did a LOT of calls… 📞 Then we knocked by some contacts at the apartment next to ours… Then, we met with Yvette! Yes, same Yvette who dropped us for an evangelical church! She put in another referral and said she wanted to come back! So yay!!! This time we’re pretty sure she’ll get baptized… she called us and said that she wanted to get baptized TODAY! 😆 Uhhh so she might be a little toooo bappy happy, we’re trying to get her as excited about the doctrine itself too! we talked to our friend Jim for a bit, and he said he wanted to come to church! We then got monsoon’d, so that sucked… but then we ran into an ex-member who said she’d call her dad to pick us up?? What a miracle! 😇
Saturday
Baptism day! Well, it wasn’t our friends, but there were 2 baptisms for the other missionaries in our district! One of them was the sisters’ friend, so i got to baptize him! That was an awesome experience! Yvette also came to watch the baptism, and she said she was super excited for her’s! We then met with Nathan and talked about the day when we’re gonna throw away all his stuff… and then ended off the day by running some calls with a recent convert named Shawn!
Sunday
Church church church! We were at the church for like 8 hours! It was crazy! Sacrament meeting was awesome, 2nd hour (all combined cause 5th sunday) was awesome, and then we stuck around and hit p-study, then had a lesson with Samuel! Found out we actually can’t baptize him cause he’s on parole, so that was sad to learn (we planned to baptize him this upcoming Sunday)… 😞 Someone took apart Elder Balls’s bike for some reason??? Like literally just disassembled the wheel, the seat, the brakes… And so he spent an hour fixing it and putting it back together… 😭 then we met up with Brother Macy (WML) and went through a run-down of the week! Then, we met with Tony, a pass-off from the hermanas, and ran through some of the gospel with him! 🥰
Monday
A CRAZY DAY! So to start off our day, we had to bike through a thunderstorm to get to district council! ⛈️ The spanish elders picked us up on the way there, so that was really nice… We learned about some drama about one of the baptisms – apparently the other guy (the one i didnt baptize) like wasn’t supposed to be and therefore wasnt confirmed?? Really weird… we then came back home… shortly after realized we left Balls’s helmet in the Spanish elders’ car… sooo then Balls went into our little storage closet right outside our apartment, to which we found ANOTHER BLACK WIDOW! anddddd 7 egg sacs surrounding her! Bruh… anyways, we then went to the front office and asked them when they could exterminate… to which they said it would take a week… and we were like heckkk no 😭 literally some of the sacs would probably hatch by then! Soooo we took care of it ourselves! We grabbed a LONG stick and spent a long and scary process of scooping up the egg sacs and putting them into a pickle jar… eventually we got it all in there! But the mama got away… we then saw the spiders hatch inside of the pickle jar, so that was really cool! Then we realized exterminating black widows isnt part of our missionary purpose, and got back to knocking… we met with Yvette and went over the plan of salvation with her!! She started tearing up, she’s really excited to be baptized and learn more. And then we came back to find another (different!) black widow sitting in a web next to our door. So yeah.
TLDR
Fun week! We’re feeling really confident about our friends Nathan and Yvette, and are pushing them to keep covenants for baptism! Killed some (female! The deadly ones) black widows 🕷 in our spare time… had some more bike problems, but it didnt stop us from doing our work! The Spirit is real, and its the only reason we’ve been successful despite these trials! The Lord is hastening his work FOR SURE!! 😋
Love ya’ll!
Elder Andrew Hyun
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