Ours was a pretty good but pretty hectic week. There were a few people that the previous elders were teaching that were hard to get a hold of, but we finally have made contact with most of them. We met with the ward mission leader for 2.5 hours on Tuesday, and again yesterday we met with him for a long while going through the ward list. We also met with the Bishop on Thursday night, and he is on board for missionary work. The whole ward is basically returned missionaries--including many of the women in the ward. It's interesting to see why they haven't had as much success in this ward, and I'm not even really sure why, but we hopefully are going to turn it around. The only disheartening thing about meeting with the Bishop was that he only invited us to go to one ward council per month, and that's the 4th Sunday ward council--so we won't be going to one until Sunday of week 5, Oct. 28th. Kind of a bummer.
We taught Dan and Linda this week, which were investigators that were being taught by the last elders. They had a VERY strong relationship with the previous elders, and I know it was hard for them to have them leave and have us as the new missionaries. We taught them on Wednesday with the bishop's wife, and it went well, but Linda told us at the end not to ask her so many questions, and niether would agree to say the closing prayer. They were set for Oct. 20th for baptism. We were supposed to have another appointment with them right now, Monday at 11, but they called us this morning and requested no more "home visits" which was really sad. They said they have some things to figure out because he may be taking a job in Idaho, but I asked them if they would still read and come to church and he said they were still going to do that "as of now." He said they probably wouldn't make their baptismal date because he might have to go to Idaho on the 17th of October. It was a really disheartening experience. I know they know it's true, but I think they took the missionary transition very badly. I don't know what we can do. We feel as if the ward who knows them very well is going to make the difference there.
We had a couple of cool experiences this week where we were in the "wrong" place according to what we planned to do, but in the right place according to God. We had a dinner with a family whose address wasn't updated on our records, so we knocked on the apartment door, and the lady who answered wasn't the lady who had set up dinner with us. She looked pretty taken aback, and we kind of told her we had the wrong address, but then gave a tracting approach, and she said that she was LDS. She was carrying a newborn, and said she hadn't been to church in a long time, and that her husband who wasn't a member probably would not be interested in hearing what we had to say. We asked if he would be willing to meet us, and she said that he would be ok with that. We got her phone number, and she said we could stop by at any time. Pretty cool! Her name is Rachel. We were also tracting after not being able to see the people we were going to in this apartment complex and we knocked on one door and a guy stepped out named Garrett. He told us that he was actually baptized years back, but hadn't been to church in a long while. We asked him if that was something he would like to get back into, and he said he would. So we have his address and he told us his schedule, so we told him that that was why we were there, to help people grow closer to Christ. So that was another cool experience...hopefully we'll be able to meet with him this week.
I love you and miss you a ton. I know the work is God's, and He lives, as does His Son. I love the gospel that can provide us peace in times of trial. It is the Good News of Christ.
Love,
Elder Logan Bryan
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