Monday, June 16, 2014

91st Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Patchogue, New York

So many Cancellations Written June 2, 2014

This was a week of cancelled appointments. I don't know how it happened. It was like everybody got together and set up a club to cancel on Erickson and Mendez. We managed to make some things happen, but it was ridiculous.

We had to start the week off with some sad goodbyes. It was Elder Ozuna's last p-day in the mission. We didn't do too much that day, we mostly just hung out with him. His two years were up and he was headed back to the Dominican Republic. We met up again on Tuesday morning to say one final goodbye and take last pictures with him. It was sad to see him go. He was crazy, but we'll miss him.

We met up with Janet and Ruth again, the less active and her friend. When we got there, she had questions about how we can know that our church is true. Which worked out well because we were planning to discuss the rest of the Restoration with them. First though, they made us dinner. Which happened to be fried tilapia. Elder Mendez and I aren't the biggest fans of fish, but we did what we had to and we picked those bones clean. That's the worst part of eating fish like that is trying to avoid all of the bones. They're so darn sharp. Anyway, after the fish, we taught the lesson and it all went really well. Ruth seems less interested, she has to work on Sundays and isn't interested in trying to get them off. But Janet loved it all and is ready to pray and get an answer about the Book of Mormon. Always exciting when people are ready to act on what we teach.

Thursday was the day when everything fell through. We had four appointments set up and by 9 in the morning, all of them had cancelled. We wandered around, trying to find someone to meet with, but nothing was working out. We only managed to talk to one family, and that wasn't until like 8:30 at night, so all we had time to do was set up another appointment for next week. Still good to make that happen though.

Friday didn't have much going on either. More things fell through. The upside is that dinner didn't fall through. We met up with a family in our branch at a Hispanic restaurant and they bought us pupusas for dinner. That was really nice. They were good pupusas too. They got us flan for dessert. I'm not the biggest fan of flan, but it wasn't too bad. For not liking it very much, it was good flan.

The biggest event of Friday was that we purchased our epic turkey. Elder Mendez and I decided that we should have an epic week of turkey. There was one on sale for a dollar a pound at the store, so I bought a 20 pound turkey. It seemed like a great deal to me. On Saturday, we put it in a big pot full of orange juice to let it soak for 24 hours. Then we cooked it up on Sunday morning so it would be ready for dinner when we came home from church. It was glorious. And this week we don't need to do any shopping because we have turkey to eat all week. It's the best plan ever.

Saturday we finally had a lesson come through. It also involved dinner, which is a nice bonus. We had dinner with Maria and her younger brother Jesus again. She made a delicious rice and sausage combo for us, it was way good. Jesus wasn't super keen on having a lesson, so we had to kind of sneak it up on him. He kept waiting for us to say okay we're going to start the lesson now, but we never did. We just kind of started talking about things. The lesson was all about forgiveness. He was not happy about it at first, but once we got going, he got way into it. He and Maria both were loving it. It went well in the end and Jesus agreed to come to church the next day as well. He had been before, but it was nice to have him back again. He had a baptismal date at one point, but it fell through because he stopped coming to church. He has since decided that he'd like to get baptized again. There's still more to teach him though and we need to make sure this isn't just a whim decision. I think he's more sincere this time though, so we'll see how things go in the next few weeks.

On Sunday we got to see a baptism in our branch. The other elders have been working with a guy named Jose Ruiz who finally took the leap and got baptized. He is a good guy who started looking into the church because his girlfriend in Texas is a member. He wanted her to come see his baptism, but she couldn't make it. It was still a nice event though. It was right after church, so we had most of the branch there. That was pretty cool. The rest of the day involved enjoying our epic turkey and going to visit our old friends Nancy and Augustine. They live with a less active family in our branch. We visited with them for a while and tried to teach a lesson on the importance of scripture study. It kind of fell apart because everybody started arguing about hypocrisy in church. But I think we managed to pull it back in the end. I'm not sure. We're going back over there on Tuesday for dinner, so we'll have another shot.

Lots of things are happening here, regardless of the cancelled appointments. The sisters have a baptism coming up and we have potentially these two with Taylor and Jesus. June is a big month for the Patchogue Branch. Now we just need this beautiful spring weather to hold off on summer for a bit. That would be nice.

Love,     Elder Erickson

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