August 19th, 2019 Letter #93

Yeah our investigators kind of went downhill because they came out and said that they like the way that we teach and so they've accepted our visits, but they say that they get bored in church. We´ll try to explain the purpose of church more to them, but it's looking iffy. That being said we have a couple other people that are progressing so we'll see what we can get out of this whitewash.

My favorite part of the week was teaching in splits with one of my zone leaders, Elder Lazareto from Brasil. He really teaches incredibly well and has a cool life story as well. 

The most challenging thing was just trying to keep up the good spirits after our investigators said that they weren't impressed by the Sunday church services (they also took another one of our investigators who had a baptismal goal shopping on Sunday instead of going to church so that was wonderful). 

The tender mercy is that while we more or less lost the 2 that went to church last week, we had a different 2 in church this week and one has the desire already to be baptized. 

Something that was funny, but I couldn't laugh in the moment was that we visited an elderly member of the church. He has bad knees. That much is unfortunate, but the remedy is the curious part. He caught a bee by the head with his fingers and held it behind his knee until it stung him. He claims that the sting will hurt for a couple hours, but it takes the pain from his knees for a few days. I thought it was crazy, but his daughter/(granddaughter?) was next in line as she wanted one for her ankle. Weird. 

One thing I love about my companion is his work ethic and ability to plan. He is of the mindset of "if we´re going to work then we´re going to do it effectively." And so he's good at making sure we have things to do. 

One thing to pray for is that we can gain the trust and respect of members, investigators, and other missionaries. In other words just be true representatives of Christ. 

One thing I like a lot about the area is that there are a lot of members who want to help with missionary work. Something that stood out in my studies was an article I read in the Liahona about President Nelson. It mostly inspired me to seek a good education and try to use my time as efficiently as possible while remembering to seek the kingdom of God first in all things. Cool article.

For P-day we played hockey in the church's gym. We just used water and soap to make the puck slide well. It was kind of crazy, but fun

Love you,

Elder Finlinson

We found a book called "How to draw:Wizards, Warriors, Orcs and Elves" in the house and so I decided to give it a try. I would assume that a missionary left it, but I don't know its story.