How to Jog Him

Hello :-) Transfers are this weekend so send letters to the mission office. Things are still going pretty well. Jonathan dropped us this week and Ralph still doesn’t feel worthy to come to church but life is still good.

Does anything remind me of those missionary movies? Tons of things actually. That’s what I’m doing out here—preaching, teaching, having hard times, having good times, punching my companion…just kidding. I don’t slam doors into my investigators either :)

We still are visiting lots of less-actives and trying to get more investigators. We do some knocking, but that isn’t always effective. It’s a great way to find mean people though haha. I thought it was a joke that people slam doors on you, but it isn’t! Remember that BOM cartoon movie where Alma is knocking doors? That happens to me sometimes. They open the door, and then close it before I can even say anything. It’s okay though, they probably think we’re really weird and even annoying. One guy said, “Come on guys!” Elder Chadburn: “Come on what?” “It’s Saturday night!” slam. We were like, uh…so? We should have said, come on in? ok. Lol It’s fun to be a missionary. There are lots of nice people too.

We had a lesson with Marla, a recent convert/less-active, on Tuesday and watched the Testaments. Hopefully she felt the spirit. I don’t think her husband did though. He’s not a member and he even slept through a bunch of it.

The ward is really trying to invite lots of people to the Luau we’re having next month. Not very many have reserved a spot yet so one of the members is getting really nervous and wants to start inviting people from the second ward. We hand out a lot of flyers to people and lots want to come, but since it isn’t till September 12th people put off reserving a spot till it gets closer and Bro. Lew (who is organizing everything) is getting frustrated. I hope lots of people call in as it gets closer. It should be really cool. We are having free food (Hawaiian) and Polynesian professional dancers coming so it’ll be authentic. It’s all about missionary work so members can’t come unless they bring a less-active or other friend. I hope we can find some people to teach from it.

On Friday we ate dinner with the people who live under us. They are both into religion for their careers so they were excited to talk to us. It was an interesting night and my companion tried really hard to convince then through just doctrine/proof. It didn’t really work well, but I got to share the restoration and invite them to pray so it ended well at least. I guess it’s something really tempting to try and do when you know the gospel is true. You start studying and come to see how everything supports what you know, but when you try to explain that to others it just doesn’t work as you think it would. I really believe in just teaching simply what we believe and then asking them to study it themselves and pray about it, because unless they feel the spirit they aren’t going to change. It’s hard sometimes to teach that to my companions, but I think they already know it, just have to learn to implement it.

We continue having really good lessons with Ralph, but he’s just scared to make that one step to start on the path to change and I’m not sure why. He reads and prays a little, but he needs to clean up his house, start trying to quite smoking, and come to church. I’m not sure how to jog him into action, but I guess that’s why I need to use the spirit.

A guy in our ward is the producer/director of a show on Nickalodeon called Yo Gaba Gaba for pre-school age kids so if you ever see it, remember I know the guy that makes it. I really like the members here; they are really cool and diverse.

Guess that’s about it so hope you all have a good week. Thanks for the continued letters, support, and prayers.

Love,
Elder Curtis