Conference! Written October 7, 2013
Well it was another week of funky weather here in Brooklyn. Mother Nature needs to make up its mind already. Courtesy of climate change, I managed to come down with a cold last Tuesday. So that was super fun. Luckily we were just teaching English classes that night, so I was able to rest while Elder Spencer helped out with teaching.
I was feeling mostly better by Wednesday evening, which was important because we had a really cool lesson that night. In our mission, we just had a bunch of missionaries come in who are supposed to go to Brazil. But their visas haven't come through yet, so they were reassigned to serve here until they get their visas. We have two of these visa waiters in the English district in our area. They are both in trios, although one of them got put with an English companionship and the other got put with a companionship that teaches entirely in Haitian Creole. Not super convenient for somebody who's trying to learn Portuguese. I question why that was done. But no matter. I felt bad for this guy, Elder Miller, always struggling to understand what was going on in Creole. So I talked with their district leader and I got to take him out teaching with us on Wednesday night. The original plan involved Elder Spencer going with a member, so that Elder Miller could have a chance to not be in a trio. But that fell through, so we just went all three of us to the lesson. I had Elder Miller plan the whole lesson and teach it in Portuguese. It was really cool, the less-active member we taught understood probably 80% of everything he said. And the stuff he didn't understand I just translated into Spanish for him. It was awesome. And I can understand Portuguese too! That was cool, to hear a different language and yet I can just kind of pick out what he's saying. It was just a cool night altogether. Elder Miller was so happy because he understood what was going on for the first time since coming to the mission field. We have since made it a Wednesday night tradition. We're going to alternate with the other visa waiter too, but we're going to get these guys a chance to start teaching in their assigned language for a change. I think it will be a lot of fun.
Moving on from there, we also had a cool day on Friday. We have been working with the Castro family for a while now. The mother got baptized last January and the husband got baptized about a year ago. She still comes when she doesn't have to work, but he has since fallen back into working every Sunday. He hasn't come to church since like January. We have been going over there every Friday to visit with them. They are a really cool family and it's always nice to visit with them, but we had kind of run out of things to share. You can only tell a person that he needs to come to church so many times before it gets pretty old. So we decided to switch up our tactics and talk about conversion instead. That was last week's lesson. We got to eat dinner with them this week, which was way tasty. Brother Castro sure does know how to cook. Then we pulled a complete audible on our lesson. We had something completely different planned, and we ended up talking about how to feel the Spirit for an hour with them. It didn't feel like a lesson, so much as a friendly discussion. And Brother Castro has never participated so much in a lesson before. It was awesome. He actually engaged in conversation with us for a change instead of just us teaching. And at the end, he even asked us a question about how he can help a friend who is struggling. He has never once asked us a question or asked us for help. This was the greatest lesson ever. After months of visits, we have finally managed to gain his trust. I don't know what changed. But I am so glad that it did. Hopefully we'll be able to start making some real progress now with him.
Those are the fun stories from the week. The rest of Saturday and Sunday were pretty much all consumed by watching conference. Although what a great conference it was. I quite enjoyed it. Our ward threw a food party in between the two sessions on Sunday. It was epic. All the members brought a bunch of food and we had the English ward combine with us to have a sweet lunch. No better way to celebrate conference than epic amounts of food.
Things are going well out here. We're just chugging along. The transfer is only halfway over and I think we're still going to do a lot of good before the end of this six-week run. Love you guys and hope all is well!
Love,
Elder Erickson
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