Traveling by Foot and Cadillac written May 26, 2014
We had a hilarious adventure to start off the week. Elder Coca managed
to lock his keys in his car. The only spare was in the mission office.
His companion had a trip to the temple the next day, so he was going
to pick up the spare when he was there the next day. In the meantime,
Elder Coca is going to be on exchanges with another missionary who has
a bad knee, so he can't walk very far. He wasn't sure what he was
going to do all day without a car, so we volunteered our car to them.
We only had one appointment in the afternoon and English classes in
the evening, plenty of time to get around by foot.
So at about noon, we gave them our car and we got started walking.
Luckily, it was a beautiful day. We walked for about an hour and a
half to get to the appointment. It went well, we met with that less
active woman and her nonmember friend from last week. We taught them
part of the restoration and they fed us a baller dinner of rice and
chicken. Then we got started walking back to the church. We got there
just in time to teach the classes. We checked out our route afterwards
and we clocked just over ten miles in total that day. It was so much
fun. I miss walking in the city all the time. It was a nice throwback
to last summer in Brooklyn.
The next exciting event was our lesson with Taylor on Friday. He
didn't want to bother his roommate, so we met him at a Starbucks
nearby. We taught him about the Plan of Salvation and he really liked
it. I began to discuss potential options to find him a better ward or
branch to attend where he might have more support. I listed a number
of options and even suggested that maybe he wait a bit until he's in a
better situation. He responded by asking me when he could get
baptized. He's been to church enough, he could technically get
baptized tomorrow if he wanted. He told us that he's decided that he
really needs to do this and so he's going to get baptized. He said
he's prayed about it and it feels like the right thing to do. So we
looked at a calendar and set a baptismal date for the 8th of June.
We're all very excited. We decided to celebrate by going to Checker's
for lunch. He drove us there in his '93 Cadillac. That was such a
sweet ride.
Saturday was a cool day as well. One of the Sister missionaries here,
Sister Vasquez, has an aunt who lives in the area right next to us.
Her aunt's brother in law is in the hospital for some problem with his
legs. Sister Vasquez's mom called the aunt and asked if she wanted the
missionaries to come give the brother in law a blessing. So the
sisters called us and we went with them to the hospital to give this
guy a blessing. He didn't have much going on, and Sister Vasquez asked
if he wanted to hear about our message. He said sure, so we started an
epic, four missionary lesson. It's just so many missionaries teaching,
it gets a little crazy sometimes. It went pretty well though. He said
he would read the Book of Mormon and was willing to come to church
when he got out of the hospital. The aunt showed up by the end and
also said that the sisters could come by and share their message with
her. It was a cool experience, especially for Sister Vasquez.
Lasted that day, we met with our old friend Stalin Lenin. We haven't
been able to meet with him in a while, but we finally got back over
there. We shared the restoration with him and he ate it all up. It's
so great to teach people who are actually interested and who ask
questions to try to understand better. Stalin had no shortage of
questions, it was a really fun lesson. He was busy this Sunday, but
said he could come the next week. I think he'll actually read the Book
of Mormon too, he seemed sincere about it.
And those are the adventures for the week. Transfer calls came in,
Elder Mendez and I are staying here for another six weeks at least.
Only twelve more weeks of adventure, so I better make the most of it
while I can!
Love,
Elder Erickson
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