Email Received on February 20, 2012

Hi Family!

Friday: we did weekly planning and went around just finding places to tract and no hope there. We had a lesson with a less active and his son, Jawan, who had little to no knowledge of religion period so we had to massively simplify the plan of salvation. Then on Saturday we had the best of luck. We went to go tract the rest of a road in Dendron called Railroad Rd.  We had little to no success except a guy interested in the Book of Mormon to read and when we finally ended that meeting a big black family comes out on the dusty road.  I talked to them first instead of Elder Coon and the mother was really interested.  She read a little from her Book of Mormon when the elders taught them in a group on the exchange.

Saturday:  We visited this guy named Ray Williams, a former, and he was still interested.  A year ago some other elders turned him off after he had a bad deal with his girlfriend.  He had moved to a trailer and he left and the elders came by and smelled kerosene (which leaked from heating the house) and they called the cops.  Ray was later sent to a psych ward for a few days because of this.  So that left a bad taste in his mouth. We met a couple of other people who were interested and saw a couple of referrals from one guy. We met 6 new investigators. Then went to La Hacienda and saw a couple of kids on a dinner date for a dance and the girls wore trampy dresses and one was covered in body glitter. Weird.

 

Sunday: nothing much happened.  Most of the people we invited to church didn’t come. There were some non-members who attended S. Smith’s funeral (she was the Harter’s grandma) and they loved the compassion of the people for her.  S. Smith said before she died that she was excited for the glorious work to be done in Heaven and she was glad that before she died she had finished her visiting teaching.  That was a lesson to everyone to do visiting teaching better if a 85 year old lady can do it. We had another lesson with Jawan and Larry Brown, his father, and we showed them an New Testament based movie of Jesus Christ and him growing up and they loved it and wanted to see more. It also snowed for a while and then stopped while in other areas it was like a blizzard.

Monday:  today we went with the Flys to a zone P-day nerf gun war. The Flys had all the official nerf guns and we had a blast.  The game was 2 bases against each other style and I got a lot of exercise from it. E. Roberts had gone all out and spent 100 bucks on nerf stuff like a sword, dagger, shield, pistol, 2 clips, a vest to hold it all and a sniper nerf gun. He is super weird. Then we went home and went to a thrift shop for a VCR machine and the clerk talked a bunch and showed us all these things she said she got out of the trash. Then we had dinner at the Flys and emailed from there.

Love,

Elder McClure

Email Received February 13, 2012

Hi Family,

Here’s of the scoop of my fun week so far. We are trying to get lessons with people but they don’t answer or they are too busy to have one OR we set up an appointment and they skip out another time. One cool thing was that this lady, Josephine (someone we tracted out but she wouldn't accept a lesson) came to church last Sunday!  She looked over the Hymns a lot during church. 

We went into this one place with a bunch of apartments and one had a lady who talked to us out of the second story window and that was interesting. At another door was a guy in a wheelchair with no legs.  He talked about his own religion and then he asked if I had a girlfriend.  I said “No.”  He said, “Have you ever made love to a woman?” When I said no again he told me I was in the wrong world then. Then he gave an awkward story on the occasions he goes to clubs and “gets it.” Another guy named Wallace talked to us about his community church and then said he had been dead and had had two heart attacks in the same week. He has been talking to the missionaries before. At another apartment, this older guy named Lewis (who looks like a frog) opened the door and every word we said made him smile and light up more and more, I think because he hasn’t gotten a lot of visitors.

On the same day we met a Jehovah’s Witness named Usef (Hebrew for Joseph). E. Coon had a fun time learning more about him and the JWs. A funny question E. Coon asked Usef was, “Do people ask if you are Mormon?”  Usef sort of shrunk and said in a high pitched voice, “Yes,” and we all started laughing and he said, “We get the same treatment from people if we are JWs.” He would say “Where in the ham sandwich is it?” He replaces the “H” word with “ham sandwich.”

We have had more of a tracting week.  We talked to a guy named Al who was taught 10 years ago so he is very interested in our message and we think he may want to get baptized. Another fun thing this week was that we went to a scout meeting and only one family there (the Flys) were Mormons and when we walked in the room we could feel everyone stare at us. Every day is very fun and I always try to stay positive.

I have been reading the Bible and the BOM and trying to learn more as I go along. Elder Coon is really good at pulling out scriptures and good questions for the people. That is the description of my week.  Oh, the branch's kids are really liking me like Caleb Jones and Hunter who always says “Opa!” when I see him.

Thanks for the package and all the diabetic treats therein. One thing I really desire is piano sheet music to that song you sometimes play to yourself, Mom, “Moonlight Sonata,” and Coldplay sheet music. Right now I have been practicing on hymns and "What is a Youth" and the really easy stuff you sent me. Thank you. I really miss all of you!

Love,

Elder McClure

Email Received on February 6, 2012

Hi Family,

This week has been fun but not too exciting. We tracted a lot of houses and went to the houses of both former members and potential investigators. Interesting things this week:   we got to go to zone meeting and it was fun and we had some pretty good lessons which helped a lot.

Funny story, we went on splits with Jeff, an RM, and he told us to be careful in his car because he just cleaned it up. So we went to the investigator’s house, but they weren’t there so the lesson was cancelled.  We went to a random area and got out of the car to tract and I saw some stuff on the floormat of the car.  I was wondering what it was so I looked at one shoe. Clean!  Then the other - it had a big amount of dog poop on it.  I just busted up laughing and Jeff got really angry and I had to clean the floor later but it was funny.

We committed this one lady named Mable to come to church.  The Elders have been teaching her a lot. We went to her house to ask her about the gospel and she said she will pray about it. She will come to church this Sunday. We also set Chuck Milligan for baptism on March 3^rd; he will wait to see if the spirit tells him it’s right. We met this lady and her daughter. Her name is Kitty and her daughter’s name is CJ. We got there and she was the last house to see and we asked her a couple of questions.  Then she said that she met the elders before and she needed a refresher.  By the end of our lesson, she wanted to get ready for baptism!  She’s planning to come to church this Sunday. We also talked to this lady, Bobbie, and she stopped at the pamphlet and said she needed to ask her preacher to see if she could continue.

Funny story: we started talking to this family in their backyard then it became an argument among them because one was Muslim and the others were Baptist. Then this lady was like, “Are y’all having church in my backyard? I’ll pass around the collection plate!”  

So that’s the fullness of my week and I’ll write a full letter on this week.  I love and miss you all!

-Elder McClure