Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Alfredo Sauce

Hello everyone!
Another wonderful week has passed by in the New York New York North
Mission! Fun, crazy, exciting, and strange as ever!
Our investigator D* is getting better at not smoking and he's been
trying to convince himself to come to church even though it would make
his mom unhappy. He wanted to get baptized because he could do that on
a Saturday without his family knowing, but he says his family keeps
tabs on him on Sundays. We had a joyous moment when we thought he was
going to accept a baptismal date, but then he found out he has to come
to church first. He keeps telling us his mom will die soon, and then
he can come.
B* said he'll fast this Sunday to know the truth of the Book of
Mormon, but he still seems pretty doubtful.
J* has been taught almost everything now and is progressing nicely.
His Rottweiler doesn't try to eat is when we come over now. We're just
trying to help him come to church now.
We're now meeting with a guy named R* who is our age and really
interested in the church. He's reading the Book of Mormon and wants to
come to church on Sunday. He's fun to talk to. Raised baptist but
hasn't been involved with that church for a while. He started looking
into religion again because things weren't going  too well in his
life. Apparently since he's started meeting with us, things have
suddenly started getting better.
We're also working with an inactive member who basically joined the
church to rebel against his Jewish family. We're trying to help him
gain a testimony for himself.
In other news, a man on the street came up to us.
"Are you Latter-day Saints?"
"Yeah. We're missionaries."
"I need to talk to you."
"Sweet."
He said he had a message he wanted to share with us, which was a very
pleasant little talk about the importance of keeping commandments. We
made sure we got our two bits into the conversation as well, which
left him kind of in awe. I don't think a he realized how much we
actually knew about the gospel and we ended up teaching him a lot.
When we told about the restoration, he told us that it made perfect
sense and talked about how the Catholic Church had messed up the
gospel. We told him all about the Book of Mormon (he took a copy from
us) and so much more. We thought we had found a [strange, extremely
religious, eccentric] good investigator, but then he told us he was
moving to a different state the next day. So we were going to refer
him to the missionaries wherever he was going, but then we learned
that the state to which he was referring was Israel, and God had told
him to move there to study Judaism (even though he believes Jesus
Christ is the messiah). We asked him if he was aware of what was going
on over there. He was, but seemed to not realize why it might be
safest to stay in America to piece together his own strange religious
philosophy (or learn ours). So now we're praying for the safety of
some poor, innocent, alfredo sauce Christian ginger, no more than a
few years older than I am, who is now wandering about a war zone with
no real plan so he can study the law of Moses. Oh dear.
Also, a cop got mad at us for talking to people on the streets in
White Plains. We have our ministerial certificates, but he didn't seem
to care. We just went to a different street. I think he didn't
particularly like Mormons. I suppose we're always going to run into
those people every now and then, but for the most part people like us.
Well, other than that things have been going great! Shock calls are
this week (when they call us to tell us who is getting transferred).
Apparently the missions going have to change up quite a bit because so
many new missionaries are coming. Some are predicting the mission will
actually be split within a year.
Anyway, thanks for all the love and support!
I'm about to go to the first ever p-day district v. district
volleyball tournament!
Later.

-Elder Samuel Burton

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