Family Home Evening in Patchogue written April 28, 2014
It's always nice to start off the week with a family home evening. It's great because you get to interact with a fun family and it fills up your Monday evening. There's nothing better than that. We got to have dinner with the Cortez family again and then we shared a lesson and some ice cream with them. Sister Cortez made these baller tacos for dinner. They were awesome. Elder Mendez and I went to town on those because for whatever reason the kids were uninterested in tacos. How could you not be interested in steak tacos? Whatever. I got to use a lesson that Tina sent me in the mail. It involves a bunch of pictures of animals on popsicle sticks and you show them to the kids and ask what sound that animal makes. They all love making the animal sounds, so they all get involved. Then the last one is a picture of a dove and is labeled as the Holy Ghost. Then we discuss what sounds the Holy Ghost makes and how it whispers to us and tells us to do good things like helping our mom and being nice to our little sister. That was a clutch lesson by Tina. She is a champion. It went over like gang busters, everybody loved it. Even the mother told us that was a really good lesson. So all credit goes to Tina for that one.
Tuesday was back to the normal grind of trying to look people up in the afternoon and finding nobody home, then returning to the church at 7 to teach English classes. We also managed to score dinner from a member at 6. She made us the classic chicken and rice, but threw in a curveball with some mashed potatoes. Didn't see that one coming at all. It was all tasty though, so no regrets. Nothing particularly new at English classes. Although we have some new people randomly showing up, so if we're lucky they might be interested in meeting with us. We'll find out this week.
Wednesday was tough because I started coming down with a nasty sore throat, cold, fever combo. I'm not exactly sure what it was. But it wasn't a good time. I slept most of the afternoon and managed to make it out for dinner with our branch president at 6. He made us the classic chicken and rice combo as well. His son-in-law is the elder's quorum president, so we had dinner with the two of them. It's always nice to chat with them together and hear what they want to accomplish so we can help them out. The elder's quorum president is brand new, he was just called last week. I think a new person is much needed here because we only have like four people in the elder's quorum, so new faces are always welcome.
Thursday was a really cool day. There's a girl in our branch named Estefenia. She's 19 and she recently started dating a guy named Taylor and he has been coming to church with her for a few months now. Taylor doesn't speak too much Spanish, but Estefenia's mother only speaks Spanish, so he has been picking it up so that he can talk with her. And he comes to the Spanish branch every week, so he's kind of surrounded by it. He's Christian and always willing to listen to spiritual thoughts and whatnot, but never wanted to sit down and take lessons from the missionaries. I have asked him before and he told me that he was content to just listen in church and at family home evenings and such. Fair enough, you do your thing bro. But then last Sunday, Estefenia came to me and told me that he wanted to meet with missionaries on Thursday at 12:30 and gave me his phone number. Awesome. We called him up and got his address and headed over. He lives with one roommate in this way nice apartment in the middle of a golf course. His place is all decked out too, with fancy artwork and various other trinkets. I guess his roommate is an aspiring artist, so they have a whole art station and his paintings were all over the place. Taylor made us some peanut butter pancakes for breakfast as we chatted and got to know him a little better. Then we sat down to chat. We had interviews with President Calderwood that day, so we had to set an hour time limit on our visit. I thought that was a little extreme, there was no way we were going to fill up an hour. Boy was I wrong. He told us that he had some questions for us, so I asked him what they were. It turns out his question was that he wanted a rundown of what we believe. Well cool. That's what I do best. So I commenced arguably one of the greatest explanations of the Restoration that I've ever given in my life. It was so much fun. Elder Mendez and I went to town. I haven't taught a lesson in English in almost a year, so this was great. I'm pretty good at Spanish, but I can't express myself the same way I can in English. I was able to give all sorts of examples, details, stories, comparisons, it was awesome. It all went really well. He ate it all up too. It was cool because I didn't have to wonder if he was comprehending all of the things I threw at him. He's comfortable enough with us to tell us if he doesn't understand something. The part he enjoyed most was when we discussed how the Book of Mormon can answer things that are unclear in the Bible. He wanted examples, so Elder Mendez and I took off. We gave him five or six different vague scriptures in the Bible and the answers in the Book of Mormon. He was really interested in that. It's a good thing we set the hour time limit or we would have been there all day. He committed to start reading the Book of Mormon and to pray to find out if it was true. And he came to church on Sunday. We're going to meet with him again this Thursday, so hopefully that one goes as well as the first.
Friday was another slow day because sickness struck again. I was feeling well enough to make it to one appointment in the evening with the Ventura family. It's always an adventure over there. There's so many kids running around that it's hard to get anyone to listen to anything we say to them. And every time we invite them to church they just say they're going to come and then they don't come. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out something with them soon.
Saturday we got to do some more service. There was a family in the English ward that needed a trench dug out around their above ground pool. So we got all the missionaries there and we made short work of that trench. We finished in about an hour and they ordered us pizza to thank us. We finished up the night with an appointment with another member in our branch, Brother Ibarra. We were supposed to have dinner with him and his family, but apparently his wife and daughter were at some stake Relief Society thing. So he just took us to Subway. Can't go wrong with Subway.
And the week and my sickness finished up on Sunday. Church was nothing new. I got roped into teaching primary again somehow. We learned about temples this week and we all drew a picture of the Salt Lake City temple. That lasted about fifteen minutes. The rest of class was spent playing tic tac toe and hangman. Whatever keeps these 4 five-year-olds entertained for forty five minutes. We made it to one appointment that night, but I was just not feeling it, so I went back home and chilled with Elder Coca while Elder Mendez went out with Elder Ozuna. He had been sitting around with me while I was sick for so long that Coca took the hit and let Mendez go out. It was kind of him.
So here we are, finally healthy again. Ready for another week of good times and the branch talent show this weekend. We're involved in like four numbers, so it should be a party.
Love you guys!
Elder Erickson
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