Hey everyone!
I hope all of your weeks were absolutely fantastic! Our week wasnt super eventful over here. Unfortunately a lot of people are busy studying for finals so its harder to teach, but that will never stop us!
Last Monday we taught a new person we found named Uttam! (Pronounced oo-tdum) hes a PhD student at UB from India studying Chemical engineering! Hes crazy smart. We met with him twice this week and extended the invitation for him to be baptized once the spirit confirmed to him that the Book of Mormon was true. He accepted it and even said he wanted to read the entire book of Mormon! Holy moly we were a bit blown away by his dedication, but we are excited for him!
On Wednesday we skipped most of our dinner hour to go see Patrick's art presentation! Patrick is the art grad student. He recently had his art project professionally moved into his friend's childhood bedroom. We were a bit late so we missed the presentation part, but we were there for the discussion afterwards. Art students are sooooo smart! They find symbolism in ways I cannot even begin to imagine.
We also had our last Booth of the year! We thought 2 weeks was the last week... but it turns out this week was! We actually ended up using the Christmas tree (thanks mom!) And had people help put ornaments on it! We snagged a picture this time around too!
Wednesday we also had zone meeting - most missions have zone conference instead. The only difference is zone meeting goes for 2 hours less than conference. We are super big on "don't waste a single minute!" And we've cut down a lot of the excess meeting hours we don't need.
We also met with a woman named Katiria! She was a former (a former is someone who used to be taught by the missionaries but was eventually dropped) and lives in Niagara. It's about a 30 minute drive from where we are so we use up a lot of miles to see her, so we always make the best of it! Shes going through some rough times right now, but we know that we can help her through it!
Thursday we met with a guy named Taha! Taha met Elder Hawes (my companion) and Elder Edwards when we were on exchanges and this is the first time we have met him since. He is Muslim and is probably the nicest person I will ever meet! When we saw him he actually gave us Ferrero rochers! If you guys don't know, he probably spent $10 on that stuff. It's expensive candy!!
Anyways we made a deal with him that he could educate/teach us about Islamic beliefs if we could teach him about Christianity/our faith's beliefs. He is the most respectful guy I have met out here. When he explained how Muslim's believe Christ to be a prophet and not the Son of God, he made sure to apologize for possibly sounding offensive multiple times. We noticed that whenever he mentioned Muhammad (the last Muslim prophet) he always added "peace be upon him" right after. We started saying the same after we said his name as a sign of respect and being courteous to his beliefs.
Unfortunately, as amazing as a guy as he is, we probably wont see him again. Our purpose as missionaries is to meet with those who are prepared to make commitments to come closer to our savior. Having a first lesson with Taha was great, but unfortunately he was only looking to be educated about Christianity. That being said, Taha has restored what little faith in humanity I had!
On Friday, we went to Jorge's baptism! Jorge is someone who is being taught by the sister missionaries in our branch. Jorge had been taking lessons for a month and a half, dropped off the face of the earth for a few months, then came back out of no where and was baptized within 2 weeks! I was asked to give a talk on baptism and that was a little scary since I've never given a talk at a baptism... but hey it all worked out.
One of the best parts of Jorge's baptism, besides Jorge being baptized, is that Yoon came too! Yoon has been wanting to come to the church for weeks, but unfortunately she has meetings on Sunday from 9am-3pm. We are working with her to see if she can be excused early. We should have an update on that next week.
Anyways, one of our members, Arthur, started talking to her IMMEDIATELY. They talked basically the entire time. I think I can officially say that I am not only a full time missionary, but a part time matchmaker!
On Sunday, we went to UB before church. We parked and as soon as we opened the car door, this bright orange car with a giant (giant, meaning like 5 feet tall) coffee mug strapped to the back rolls up next to us. It was a car advertising Dunkin donuts. A woman gets out of the passenger seat, says shes from Dunkin, and gives us gift cards for Dunkin donuts! They were $5 gift cards and at first we thought she was just gonna give us one each, but NOPE! SHE GAVE US $15 EACH WORTH OF FREE GIFT CARDS! Of course we knew where we were going on Monday to get lunch now!
That was basically my week, here's a spiritual thought for you all:
"Our Heavenly Father’s goal in parenting is not to have His children DO what is right; it is to have His children CHOOSE to do what is right and ultimately become like Him. If He simply wanted us to be obedient, He would use immediate rewards and punishments to influence our behaviors." ~Elder Renlund Oct 2018
Elder Breshears
Pictures:
1. $30 worth of free donuts that we ate today
2. Elder Hawes and I at our booth with our Christmas tree
3. The absolute feast we had after fast Sunday (Mom I really hope you're proud of me!)
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