Our friend Googly

Nov 5, 2012

     Missionary work is hard, it really drains you. It is so wonderful though. This is the best thing anyone could ever be doing with their time really. Not just teaching those who aren't part of the church but strengthening those who have become weakened, just helping people and teaching them of Christ. The Lord has really blessed me that I do not suffer too much from the summer's heat or from the sudden rapid cool down. Its now about 50 degrees in the mornings and in the seventies for the high point with cold cold wind. Sister Fine has a hard time with the sudden chill but I am still walking around in short sleeves for the most part, outside anyway. I think its because I don't try to fight the cold that my body is adapting so much better. The Lord is truly blessing me.



 I got a bit of a taste of home this week. We went to this lady's house and when we asked her if we could help her with anything she had us help her in her garden picking inchworms and hookworms and killing aphids on her plants. She has a nice little garden in her backyard an the hookworms were huge and amazing and eating all the leaves. They hang on upside down and as they grow larger they are harder and harder to get off, they have little suction feet thingies like geckos. After we helped her she gave us an eggplant from her bush. It was nice and since it was Halloween that day we glued little googly eyes on it, so it had a cute little face. We named him Googly and he was our mascot on Halloween in our trunk at the trunk or treat.



     Halloween was fun, we volunteered to do a trunk at one of our wards and handed out candy. Some of the candy we had stuck pass along cards to with our number on it and we tried to give a pass along carded candy to each of the kids who we did not recognize (so probably not members) but we couldn't make enough cards. There were so many people at the trunk or treat from the ward and from the neighborhoods. We probably gave away 200 or so pass along cards. We had high hopes of getting calls, we put a lot out there in faith and you never know how the Lord will work, but as yet it has not yielded anything we can see, only time will tell though, it might not yield fruit till years later when some mom is cleaning out her garage and finds a card with a picture of Christ on it all old and battered and feeling pricked in her heart picks it up and calls to get a free video about Christ or calls the missionaries just to see if the number is still existing. That's another thing I have learned on my mission, from Preach my Gospel actually, No effort is wasted. Even if we do not see the good that comes of our actions the Lord knows our works and He is the only one that sees all and knows where the ripples will be felt.



     The trunk or treat was really awesome though. Sister Fine and I dressed up as each other (switched hairstyles and clothing styles and name tags, and I even gave her my old pair of glasses with the lenses out) being about as extreme of costumes as you can do as a missionary. The Trunk or Treat was actually just a small part of one of our wards' Halloween party which started with a chili cook off (with at least 30 entries) and pie contest (tons of pie) as well as plenty of rolls, corn bread, some cake, soda, hot dogs  and popcorn. Then there were tons of games near the trunk or treat area and face-painting and karaoke and a picture booth (pictures to be developed and delivered to your home at a later date coincidentally by missionaries) and a table about emergency preparedness and food storage and also, because the Beverly Glen ward does nothing halfway, pony rides. Basically we had everything plus one at the party. It was wonderful but exhausting. Really really exhausting. Our trunk was awesome though, we borrowed some decorations from one of our members and made it really cool looking (going to try to send you a picture) with a witch and cool Halloween garland things and battery powered candles that flicker like a real candle and of course Googly. We also were given tons of candy by different members to pass out and we still ran out, kids kept going through again and again though. It was really fun and we did meet a few people and it helped some of our recent converts and less actives and others we have been working with. I didn't get any candy though really, not that I should be eating sugar anyway.

    
     Life is good. Missionarying is hard but worthwhile. We only have two investigators at the moment so we are really focusing on helping solidify our recent converts. Some of them are weakening so we are trying to strengthen them so they do not fall away. Right now one of our big pushes is getting them started on genealogy. There is this really cool statistic. If you get a recent convert to the temple to do baptisms in the first two months after their own baptism the lifelong retention rate is something like 20% (don't remember this number well) but if you get them there in that time and have them do work for some of their own names the rate goes over 80%. Its awesome, we are trying to infect all of them with the spirit of Elijah. And it seems that I am being inadvertently infected also. I want to seek out my ancestors, too.