July 29, 2014

 

This has been a week with much less traveling to find members and more working with some of those we have found.  Evan and I went to a ladies house a couple of weeks ago and had a good visit with her and learned of her reasons for not attending church (excuses).  Since then we have taken the Elders with us and they have been teaching the lessons from the beginning with Peggy who is the member and her son who is not a member.  She really suffers from depression and if nothing else our visits seem to bring some light into her life.  She enjoys bantering with the Elders and is very receptive to listening.  Her son Ivo was so funny at one lesson.  He said “I hope I don’t offend anyone but I don’t really like Mitt Romney”.  We reassured him that he didn’t have to like Mitt to be a good member of the church.  They gave us a pretty firm commitment to come to church on Sunday but didn’t make it for some reason. We had learned from the Elders that last Sunday when the James family came with the two boys that had helped us so much that they were really bored in the Sunday School lesson.  On Thursday I called the teacher and talked to her about teaching the boys in Sunday School and if we didn’t do something more interactive than read an article from the Ensign we would lose them.  She was grateful that I wanted to help her as she has never been taught how to teach.  She was given the lesson manual and told she could just read the lesson.  As a convert of 4 years she can only do what she has seen others in the branch do and that is mostly how everyone teaches in this branch.   We came up with a lesson from the Primary 4 manual Book of Mormon on the Tree of Life story which is what we had just read with the James family.  Even though the boys are 12 and 14 they have neither one had Primary so we felt that going back to the very basics would be more beneficial to them.  This might be one of the better ways that I can make a difference in this branch.  By helping someone learn how to teach more effectively it can benefit her and the branch.  Unfortunately the family didn’t come to church so we will just hold the lesson for next week.  The same sister taught the FHE lesson last night and even though she still read an article from the Ensign she did try and ask some questions and elicit some comments during her reading which was new so I think she is catching the vision. We had high hopes of a number of less actives and investigators attending church as we had several commitments for them to be there and not one showed up.  Back to the drawing board so to speak.  We will never give up as we have really come to love these people and want them to be back and feel of the joy of the gospel. We were able to help out the Hermanas(Spanish speaking Sisters) in our area as after District Meeting we drove them about 40 miles to see the LDS dentist.  He does their dental work for free so it makes it worth the trip especially if we can help them out with the miles.  It gave us an opportunity to get to know them and learn of the challenges they had to come on their missions.  I am so impressed with all the missionaries in our district. We pray that you are all helping the missionaries in your own areas.  We have certainly learned how important the members are in missionary work.  The missionaries certainly can’t do it alone.   The gospel is true and we need to share that with everyone. It would be good to hear from any of you.  Thanks to those who continually drop us notes. Love to you all Elder and Sister Fullmer etc.