Getting to know Lafayette Sept 22, 2012

We are enjoying ourselves, very much, as we serve in the Lafayette area.  We are busy almost constantly and enjoy the constant interaction we have with others.  We are becoming acquainted with the many new members who have moved in this Fall to go to school, as well as long standing members.

We are meeting about 15-20 new families a week.  They are here mostly getting Masters and PHD Degrees at Purdue.  We have gone to their homes with appointments and taken them loaves of fruit bread or our famous home made bread.  Of course they are not full size loaves, but just enough to let them know they are welcome and appreciated.  in some cases we have made it to their homes before the Bishopric has.  That is fun.  We have met some very interesting people with amazing majors and focus.  A couple of them are here to teach at the University too.

Our town now is full of students everywhere.  The traffic has become horrific and when we go to the Institute, people are everywhere.  It is such a clean campus and everyone seems very friendly.  We like going to the institute and hanging out with the missionaries or with the members that we know.

We have been able to locate a few families that we can serve and help and even one that we are teaching the missionary lessons to their three boys, two who are teenagers and one under twelve. 

The Lewis Family has two boys ages six and four.  They are less active and we are trying to help them become active.  We went in last week and did a family home evening with them.  Elder Whiting made a family home evening board out of foam core, we made some visual aids, and took refreshments.  We did about a 15 minute lesson on the choices that we make, and that our Heavenly Father planned for us to have the freedom to make choices.  How, if we make good choices we can be happy, and when we make poor choices we are not so happy.  The kids struggle a little with obedience, but both parents work and the father is very hard on the kids.  So we tried to take a positive approach.  The parents also responded to the ideas that we presented.

When we left their house the whole family was working better together and the kids were thrilled that we had focused the whole lesson around them.  As they learn to trust us and pay attention, we will pay more attention to the parents who have a few challenges too.  It was a well spent Sunday evening and they were so very appreciative of it.  The young missionaries were telling us today that they had shown them the FHE board that Elder Whiting had made.  Hopefully we will be able to get them to put it into use as a family.  They also had a nephew living with them who is 19 and a non member.  He sat through the lesson and was open with us.  We told the young missionaries about him today.

Last Saturday, Bro. Jones, in the ward ask us if we would come to his swim and pizza party for his Sunday School Class at his home.  We were thrilled to be able to go so that we could become better acquainted in the ward.  Most people know us or at least who we are, but we do not know them so well.  Besides that, Bro Jones, has a wife and three or four children who are inactive in the church because the wife has been in on some anti doctrine that she has been hearing.  The husband is the only active one in the family and he is a convert.  We loved interacting with Bro Jones, parents, and the kids that came.  He told them they could bring their whole families.  Many did and they had a lot of fun.  At one point I got to visit with Sister Jones.  She was very nice but would not come out to interact with people at the party.  She stayed in her kitchen and did her own thing. 

The new member party at the home of the Bishopric member's house was amazing last Saturday.  For members who had moved into the ward during the last few months, there were about 75 people attending.  It was a pot luck and all the leaders were there too. Everyone just sat around and visited in that huge back yard, with the leaders who also had come.  Great idea to welcome everyone.

We have been trying to spend Saturdays and some evenings finding less active people who are on our rosters.  We are finding that many of them have already been visited by the young missionaries who say they do not tract because it is not effective!!  That makes it hard for us with two sets of missionaries and we are repeating the same things that they are doing.  We are finding a few who will let us come in where they have not invited the young missionaries in.

One day while we were searching for less active members, we came along Tamara's name.  When we got to her house we found that there were a lot of people there.  They were sitting on the front porch so we visited a little and made an appointment to come back in the evening.  When we came back the next week, we found that Tamara had joined the church in her youth and had just not been active.  Her sister was also living with her who had joined.  Between them they had five children, three of them who needed to be taught the Gospel and all about God.   So we talked a lot to the women the first night.  Ask them a lot of questions about how they felt about the church, etc. 

They were very open and honest with us.  The spirit was strong.  We told them how much support the church could be to them with their families.  We ask if we could come back and teach their children the Gospel and renew their testimonies.   The children seemed very excited about it as well as the moms.  It won't be easy because there are a number of problems to deal with.  We have some word of wisdom problems and a few other things to correct.  We will do it with a lot of love and kindness.  Already, though, we love this family.  The kids are very sweet.

Today we had District Meeting at the ward building.  We love to go to these.  We have 13 members in our district.  It is big.  We are like the parents of the group.  We usually take refreshments left over from whatever we have had to provide for the week.  Today we took the brownies left from our institute class and the Pumpkin chocolate cookies  from last week.  We just put them in the freezer when we are through and pull them out when we need to take something somewhere.  Today we talked about always teaching the doctrine behind the principles that we teach.  We have such a great District Leader.  He does a great job.  It is really great to sit and just bask in the spirit of the meetings.

Today after our District Meeting, we kept an appointment with a bachelor member.  We shared with him some bread, visited a few minutes and then talked with him about the Book of Mormon and how important it is to our testimonies.  He has only been a member about six years, still very tender.

We visited Patrick later in the afternoon.  Patrick is a recovering drug addict who has fallen away from the church with various addictions.  We found him one day in an apartment building where we were visiting some ward members.  When we knocked on his door, he invited us in and seemed thrilled to see us.  We visited for a while and ask him what we could do to serve him.  Patrick told us that he wanted to quit smoking and how could we help him.  We talked in depth about that, invited him to clean his apartment, read in the scriptures and cut back on his cigarettes.  We left and informed him we would be back in four days.

We left excited that we had found someone that could use our help.  But when we returned each time we found more and more problems.  Patrick has gone back to using marijuana recreationally, and we are not sure of any other things that he has been doing.  But he did slur his words a lot.

To make the story short, when we went today Patrick told us that he was going back to work on Monday.  We will see if he keeps his word.  He doesn't seem to have a lot of discipline and his stories change very often.  We read with him today about the story of the Tree of Life and holding to the iron rod.  Patrick really wants to change and do better, we hope he will.  We keep asking him what he wants to do and he has big ideas, but not a lot of follow through.  We told him we would continue to come as long as he is progressing.  Today we took him a loaf of banana bread for cleaning his apartment.  We were trying to encourage some cleanliness.  We continue to pray for Patrick.

We are learning and growing again in this mission.  I am learning to cherish the scriptures and the reality of the atonement and how I can come to Christ.  I know that I am the one who is benefiting from this mission.  It is a joy to serve in every way.  I am so grateful for the tender mercies of Heavenly Father that he has preserved my life to be able to spend time immersing myself in his work.  And how grateful I feel to be able to share this experience with someone whom I cherish and love so much.  I love the feelings of the spirit teaching me of the things I need to teach or add to the lessons.

Last night Elder Whiting set up an appointment for us to give a family home evening to a family well known in our ward.  At first, I felt resentful because I generally have to come up with the plan.  But then I thought of Nephi and how he did so many things because the Lord taught him how.  Nephi was able to get the plates because he trusted the Lord to show him what he should do.  He built a boat because he trusted the Lord to teach him how.  So why can I not come up with some new family home evenings to present to the people in this area!!!  Duh!!!  Where is my faith?   He has never let me down and he never will.  Thank you Heavenly Father.  I may not be Nephi, but I know you can make the difference for me too!