Samuel's Mission e-mail Nov 26, 2007

Everyone:

Well, transfers are this Wednesday, and there's a fairly high probablility that I'll be transferred, so we'll see where in LA I am next week.

As for this week, it was really, really foggy Monday evening and Tuesday morning. You know, take-out-a-knife-and-cut-it type thickness. Anyways, on Tuesday I was on splits with our Zone Leaders, and I was the one who stayed here in Watts, so, we ended up tracting for a bit and met some good people, and then in the evening we visited a couple people and had the Libro de Mormon clase. You know, it's kind of odd--I've become so accustomed to being bilingual that it'll be kind of strange for me when I come home to be speaking only English. I guess I'll have to ask Brother Reyes to help me keep in practice.

On Wednesday, we had interviews with President Blackburn, and then we visited several people. We visited Maria Hernandez and helped clean up her house a bit as we often do, we visited Veronica and her family, and we also tried to visit Marcelino. Marcelino has been sick this whole week, so we haven't been able to speak with him. We're praying that this will pass quickly, because it's the last thing he needs on top of all his other problems.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, so we had a two-zone Turkey Bowl football game, and then we visited Norman and planned. In the evening we visited Hermana de la Torre. She's doing pretty well. We've actually been seeing a good bit of sucess with less-active work recently, which has been heartening, given how none of our investigators showed up at church this Sunday. Pues, asi es la obra misional. After that, we cooked our Thanksgiving feast of baked chicken and stuffing and other such stuff(Elder Bartholomew's parents included some stuffing and dehydrated potatoes and such for Thanksgiving in his birthday package).

On Friday, we had our zone meeting, and then we visited Cindy. Cindy is having trouble feeling like she's getting an answer to her prayers about the Book of Mormon, and she has a friend who's inviting her to Catholic mass, so she's kind of divided right now. We also finally contacted Lisa, a referral we've had for a while. She seems to be earnest, so she should be a good investigator. That doesn't mean she'll be baptized soon, of course--one thing I've learned about missionary work is that a lot of times your work is more ploughing and preparing the soil so that some time later the seed can take root in them.

On Saturday we visited Tammie, who was one of the people I contacted while on splits, and she also seems good. We also taught Lola, and she seems to be doing pretty well. She's just one of those people that it's difficult to teach since she tends to leap from subject to subject with her questions. We also taught Rosario, who was a referral that we'd just gotten from Elder Thurston and Elder Kite. It turns out she's the sister of some members that live in our area, and she just recently moved from Mexico. The main issue with her is that she is one of the many people who just believes that all churches are good and everyone gets at the same point, anyways. That's a problem we run into a lot--a whole lot of people seem to believe that you can go to whatever church and believe whatever as long as it's about God. Doesn't matter how contradictory the doctrines are or what they say the requirements for salvation are, if they teach about Christ, they're good. Which is half-true--any church that teaches true doctrine about Christ does have goodness in it, it's just that only one can have it all, and a lot of people don't see that. Anyways, off of my tangent...

Sunday we had church, we visited Hermana Smith since she's going into the hospital tomorrow, we visited Irene, and we visited Hermana de la Torre again.

Well, everyone, I think I've already interspersed enough random musings in the body of this e-mail, so I'll end now.

Elder Samuel Stephens
37 And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth.
38 I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.
John 4: 37-38