July 30, 2012

This week has been a fun one. On Friday night we were invited to go to a BBQ festival by the Osage Beach elders. That was a lot of fun. We showed up and we were the life of the party. 4 young guys, who don't drink alcohol show up to a BBQ fest with white shirts and ties. There were people literally taking bets on who would ruin their shirt the first. Thankfully no one won that bet, we all stayed perfectly clean. I have to say those ribs they had there were the most absolutely best things I have ever tasted. Meat literally fell off the bone. It was epic. Everyone kept giving us more food because of who we were and our dress. One guy in particular we spent a lot of time with named, Husky. Husky was the exceptionally drunk guy who followed us and talked about Jesus with us. Husky is the guy in all the pictures. As you can see he has a pitcher of beer. In our group photo right before the picture was taken he throws his cigarette off into the distance and yells, "I'M A SINNER!!!!" and we all died laughing. That is why my face looks so odd in the group picture.

So now to a more serious note. We are still doing a lot of tracting down here, and every time we go we have a pretty cool experience. We have had 3 lessons this week just from tracting, and 3 new investigators. The first one we tracted into was a couple who had just gotten home from the hospital a few minutes before we knocked on the door and they learned that the pregnant lady's baby would not make it and that it would be a stillborn baby. And we show up right when she learned of that. We gave her a blessing and told her a brief explanation of the purpose of life and set up a return appointment. We came back on the set up date and they asked, "I thought you were coming on Saturday." and I responded by saying, "It is Saturday." Oh Missourians. And the part about that that annoyed me was we even brought out the branch president to come with us. Oh well, as any missionary knows, this is just what happens. The other tract was into a guy named Mike Hanes, and we talked with him for an hour about our religion and he just could not get over that we were so dedicated to doing what we do. He said he would give the Book of Mormon a look at and that we could stop by any time. Sweet! So more on him later. Then yesterday we tracted into Elisabeth. a smart lady who has read 7 versions of the Bible and has studied a lot of other religions. She was super exited to read the Book of Mormon and we see her again on Saturday. I literally wouldn't be surprised if she read the entire B.O.M. by next visit. Now that we have a pool of people to teach (about 8) now all we need is to get them to set appointments with us. Until then we will keep on looking. Well thanks for all your letters and all the prayers you send me. I can definitely feel them and I know that it is your faith that brings me to the people that I see. Well take care. Have lots of fun and do missionary work.