week was rough and things have slowed down a lot but this week had a
slight improvement and Plymouth is slowly starting to build again. It
just blows me away how quickly an investigator can show up and
disapear. Weird how that works!
We met President and Sister Clements on Tuesday and they are awesome!
We had a zone meeting called Specialized Training at the mission home
and of course he and his wife did the training. They spent a lot of
time introducing themselves and then did some teaching. What an
amazing couple! Seriously. I am super excited about the places that
this mission can go. President Clements is pretty similar to
President Howell too. He isn't going to make many changes I don't
think. He is just a fresh, new guy with new ideas and this mission is
going to build like crazy. I love them to death already. I'm
excited for this Thursday though because President Clements is going
to interview us that day. So I'll get to meet him one on one. It
will be great! Being a mission president would be the hardest job in
the world.
I'm excited to hear how President and Sister Howell's homecoming is
this sunday. I'm sure the service will be amazing! Let me know
everything about it. One of President Howell's son's and his wife
live in the Plymouth ward and they will be at the homecoming this
sunday too. They said they would look for you guys and say hi for me.
Cool experience on Wednesday! First off, on Tuesday at the training,
President Clements told us to invite someone to be baptized within the
next 36 hours. So we knew that we needed to do it even though we
didn't know who to invite. We thought of a couple people we could
invite and that day never got the chance to invite anyone. When
wednesday came we knew that before we went home we needed to invite
someone to be baptized. This was neat because it was our whole
mindset and purpose for the day to try and fulfill the challenge given
by our mission president. So the day went on and no opportunities
worked out. We finally went and stopped by __________ who we thought
would have the most potential to accept the invitation. But she
didn't answer the door. So we were pretty bummed, not really knowing
what to do since all of our possible opportunities didn't work out.
We decided to just continue with our plans for the day and went to
tract a street we had picked out for the rest of the evening. As we
were tracting a girl in probably her 20's answered. We got talking
and apparently a few months ago some random guy (not missionaries) had
stopped by and given her a restoration pamphlet and told her how great
our church was. It was at a time that she was spiritually searching
and so she decided to try coming to our church. She said she came to
our sacrament meeting just last month and liked it! I never saw her
though! Craziness. Anyway, we ended up teaching her the whole
restoration and guess what else? You got it. Invited her to be
baptized! She was totally placed in our path as someone that we could
invite to baptism and we just had to have a little faith that things
would work out and we would be able to complete the mission
president's challenge. The church is true! Anyway, she said that she
wants to know it's true before she gets baptized (a good idea) but she
would read the BoM and keep checking everything out to see if it is
right. The thing that stinks was she said she would rather just come
to church then have us come by. So we weren't able to get a return
appointment. All in due time, I suppose. She didn't come to church
yesterday because of work but hopefully we see her next week at
church! The moral of the story is, when the mission president/the
lord issues a challenge, you are able to complete it if you try your
hardest.
It hasn't been as hot this week as it was last week, thank goodness.
But still pretty hot. Oh well, we survive.
We met with __________ again this week and had a pretty good lesson
with him about the Holy Ghost. He is a good guy and I hope he will
take the steps to see if this gospel can actually bless his life. I
look forward to meeting with him again this week.
Remember the couple we're teaching? They are so awesome! The wife
believes everything we teach and really wants us to help her husband
to believe. I always feel the spirit really strong in our lessons
with them. The bad news is that she is going on a trip to visit her
family for 5 weeks. Her husband isn't going so we are definitely
going to stop by and visit him every once in a while but we wont be
able to do our weekly visits anymore. Sadness. When she gets back I
hope the missionaries teach them again. After our last appointment
she expressed her gratitude to us for all that we've helped her
with. I thought it was really neat.
Summer has definitely provivded a challege for us. The work is not as
prosperous and fast as it was a few months ago. We're doing
everything we can to find people that are ready to be baptized. I
know they'll come!
Wow, I can't belive the fourth of July was just last week. That feels
like it was forever ago. But it was nice. We got some good relaxing
in and then we went and delivered cookies to investigators and then
went and talked to people who were getting ready for the fireworks.
It was interesting and the cookies were pretty successful. Didn't see
any fireworks though. We were going to bed by then. I didn't mind
too much though. I was tired.
It's been an okay week and this next week is going to be even better!
I'm excited. We are improving each week and the area is slowly
growing. Onward!
Thanks for being awesome. Sounds like you had a pretty good week.
The mission is just flying by. I bet you guys feel the same way about
the summer. Can you believe that in a couple weeks I'll hit my 6
month mark. Weird!!!!! I'm suppossed to be kinda experienced or
something like that. Not so.
Love you guys!
Have a happy week!
Love,
Elder Ruesch
