Merrih Chrism

 เฮลโล Hello!

Pretty amazing week! For the hibernators among you, this week was Christmas! It was pretty fun! Thanks to everyone who sent me stuff! 

TRACTING HIGHLIGHTS

We did hours and hours of tracting this week. It was a grind! But it was worth it. Why, you ask? Well, let me tell you! 

- We got to a door with a doormat that said, "come back with a warrant." Who opened? This super super nice lady! She says that recently she's been trying to strenghten her relationship with God. She gave us coconut water, we gave her a Book of Mormon, and she invited us back! 

- We were trying a new apartment complex late at night. We were just going to try it out and head back home because we didnt have much longer. The first door that we knock, this guy opens up and he says, "oh my gosh, you guys are doing this in the cold? Come in!" He said he wasn't religious and he probably wasn't worth our time, but we sat down and over some Call of Duty, we had an actually amazing discussion about why we believe what we do. We got to share our personal conversion stories. He invited us back, and we caught him on Sunday. We shared about the Restoration and he is very interested in reading the Book of Mormon!

- One door opened up and this older guy was behind it and asked who we were. We told him that we were missionaries. He then said, direct quote, ""Would you like to come in and drink some blood and get naked?" We were pretty caught off guard. Laughed and said no, so he said, "Then get the h*ll out of here!" I'm very worried about what this man has in his apartment.

- We were doing a ton of knocking on Christmas Eve. After knocking a door with a "No Soliciting" sign (because proselytizing is different from soliciting, but that's another subject), we got no answer. We moved on to the next door, which was right next to the first one, and while waiting on that door, the first door opens. Behind it is a man with no shirt, long greasy hair, a gaming headset on, and I swear chip crumbs in his stringy beard. He starts screaming at us about being in front of his door so long, about the no soliciting sign, and about anything else he could find to be mad about. Many F-Bombs were dropped. He slams the door, opens it again to scream a little more, and slams it again. Just as this was happening, our zone leaders pulled into the parking lot of the complex and saw the whole thing happen. They were laughing so hard!

That's kinda the thing about being a missionary. You have to take the good with the bad. Both will come. But I've learned that if you can laugh about the bad experiences, like those two guys I mentioned, they become good experiences. Those are things I'll be talking about weeks, even months or years from now and I'll be able to look on them fondly, because honestly, they're hilarious.

BUNNIES OF THE BUSH

We are going on morning runs every few days. We have a trail right next to our hotel that we like to run on. One morning, it was really frosty and foggy. As we start running we see a few rabbits just chilling on the side of the trail. When we got close, they just straight up jumped into blackberry bushes off the side! If you know anything about blackberry bushes, you know they are super thorny! Even bush man wouldn't hide in those. There were rabbits in random spots along the trail. All of them jumped. We also have to run under a bridge for a second on this trail. As we were running one day, we saw this homeless person in the way just sleeping on the pavement. Kinda like Snorlax. We regained our composure and booked it past him.

LAST THINGS LAST

- we found a really ghetto playground with a half-buried tire, rusty monkey bars, and a punching bag. Catch me there on P Day.

- Uno Twist is super fun.

- I won a game called garbage. Which is pretty fitting.

- Roses are red, violets are blue, you've heard this before, but I love you!

เอ็ลเดอร์ เอาปืนมาสำหรับความปลอดภัย (Elder brought a gun for safety)

Elder Barrett