Hola mi familia! This week was really exciting, we had some really interesting things happening in the entire mission this week and have had some incredible things happen to myself and my own personal testimony, and had some really awesome miracles with the work.
So on Monday we played basketball like usual and then we had exchanges with the district leader for that night, Tuesday, and we were exchanging back Wednesday morning. Monday night we went to Lizards Thicket to eat dinner since I hadn't been there yet and needed to get a taste of some real southern cookin. So we did that where I got the 1 meat and 3 vegetables plate, with country fried steak, Mac and cheese, fried okra, and mashed potatoes and gravy. It was super good, and super unhealthy. Then we tried to visit some different less actives and other people that we might have been able to see at that time, but we weren't able to see any of them, but we did get a call to service for the next morning, so that was good.
Tuesday we started the day, someone we do service for often wanted to take us out for breakfast, so we went and had breakfast, and talked a bit and such. Then we went home had some studies up until we had our service. The service was raking up about an acre of pine straw and moving it out into the front and such. It was long and hard, and really convinced me that I really really don't ever want to live in South Carolina ever, because you have to deal with that, no thank you. We didn't finish moving all the piles to the front, so we have to go back and finish that up as well.
Then we had dinner with hermana Escobar, and it was her birthday, so she was having a party and there was a woman there that was going through a rough time with her son, he had just had surgery. She was not a member but was very faithful, and so Hermana Escobar asked her if she would like a blessing for her son. So I had the opportunity to bless her son, and that was a really cool experience, it really helped strengthen my testimony of the power of the priesthood, because after the blessing the woman told me that she could really feel something and that she knew that God's hand had just touched her son. Or something like that. So that was super cool, and has given us a super solid potential investigator, so that was a super cool miracle. Then later hermana Escobar was wanting a blessing after the party died down and everyone left, so Elder Wolfley felt prompted to give that one, and that one you could also tell that he had said everything that she needed to hear, so that was a super cool day.
Wednesday morning we exchanged back and not much happened that day other than we had English class where we had someone come that used to be a regular and seems to be getting back in the habit of coming again.
Thursday not a whole lot went on either, we had dinner with one of the members, and we scoped out some areas that we could potentially knock.
Friday was a day of planning and some other stuff. So we have this extremely large event going on next Friday. It is a party with every Spanish member in the state, so all of the members from west columbia and Charleston and everyone are coming up here for a noche de salsa. So the Columbia missionaries {us} have been mostly in charge of it so we've had to plan it a bit and work on a musical number that we are doing and some other different things. We also had to set up chairs and tables for mission conference that was happening the next day with another set of elders. And of course we also had English class, but no one cameðŸ˜.
Saturday was the day that we were all anticipating. It was the day that the entire mission would be getting together all at once for one special conference. Elder Klebingat was coming to our mission to tell us everything that we were doing wrong and everything that we needed to fix. If yall don't know who Elder Klebingat is I would exhort you to read his October 2014 general conference talk, to really see how bold and direct and non politically correct and without any care for anyones feelings that he really is. It was pretty awesome. First I got to see all my mission buddies that I hadn't seen for a long while, and talk and such. Then the conference started, where he gave us some background information about why we are here and our premarital covenants that we made to gather Israel and many other things. He also gave some of the biggest roasts of the century to just about every missionary in there and committed us to really be consecrated missionaries.
To give you more background on him, he is German, and he served in the German army, so everything that he said had a lot of power behind it and really felt more like a command then anything else. He was also super funny as well, so it wasn't all bad. It was actually my idea of a perfect conference, I've really come to love boldness and directness way more than I have beating around the bush and such. He really hit agency hard, and about while we are out here, we don't have it. We gave it up when we accepted our call to be a missionary, and how about no one is forcing us to be here, if we can't handle the obedience and the call, then the best choice for us is to go home. It was weird because it sounded much more like he was telling us to go home more so then he was motivating us to do better, but somehow that motivated us to do better.
We also had some good training to by president about the book of mormon. Then later we had a Q&A with him, and that was pretty awesome and at some points pretty entertaining as well. Like when one elder asked how to always have a prayer in his heart, Elder K looked at him funny and said "you just do it, like you know the little voice in your head, you just start talking with God. Like--Next question". So yeah he shut some questions down and did not care about offending anyone, so it was really good. But the conference itself was really good, and I'm pretty sure that everyone there got something out of it.
The mission here is definitely going to change for the better. It's been looking up for the past little while, but it will continue to do so and our success will hopefully triple in the next couple of weeks here. After the conference we went on home and had dinner and planned what to do next. We decided to hit up some trailer parks that have never been knocked before that some other missionaries let us know about. We went out with a new found desire and with the spirit still in us from the meeting. We first went to one trailer park, and started knocking. The second door that we knocked had a man, who spoke English but wanted a book of mormon, so we gave him one of those, beared our testimony of it and asked him to call us if he had any questions. Then we went on to the next door, who had aw oman that had been searching for a church for quite some time, since every church she went to left her with unanswered questions. So we gave her a book of mormon, bore our testimony, and promised that any question that she has the book will give her the answer, and that we will always be here for her to answer any questions that she might have as well. We also promised to do service for her whenever she needed it, since she's a bit older and had a broken wrist. Then we moved on to the next door, who had a girl about 23 years old that lived there, she also was very faithful and wanted her relationship with Jesus to be better. Her grandmother had just joined the church about 2 months before she had passed away and always had said good things about it. She loved her grandma a lot and had always wanted to be more like her and follow her example. So we gave her a book of mormon, bore our testimonies, asked her to read it, and asked her to go to church, which she said she would the next week when she was off work in the morning, and we asked if we could come back some day, which she said we could.
Everyone we had talked to was English speaking, and by this time we had run out of English books of mormon, but we kept on knocking. A couple of doors later we ran into Melissa, who said she was looking for a church and had heard some really nice things about the mormon faith. At this point we were pretty sad we didn't have a book to give her, but we promised that we would bring one to her soon. She also said that she would love to go to church and that we should expect to see her there, to which we said we wouldn't see her there, since we'll be in a different building, but that there would be to awesome sister missionaries waiting for her there instead. Then after we had knocked every other door in that trailer park, we moved on to the more Hispanic looking one. And the first door we knocked had a man around our age answer the door and invite us in. There we taught him the restoration and committed him to read the book of mormon and pray about whether or not it was true. He told us that he would and that he would come to church when he was off work. We set up another appointment with him for the next Saturday and went on our way. So we had some unbelievable miracles that night. More success then we had been since we've really been here. And it's all because we rechecked our desire to serve God, put some things on the altar to get rid of, and commited to be better instruments in the hand of God. We then called the sisters that would be getting those four referrals and set something the next day to go back and hand them off to all of them.
Sunday was really good as well. We had a great church meeting, even though all our members showed up an hour late, it was still really good. We had a great sacrament meeting where we had someone from the stake come and give a talk about becoming one and gave some great examples, I was sitting up on the stand and from the looks of all the faces of the members, they really seemed to be inspired, and slightly embarrassed. Then after that we had interviews with our zone leaders about what we had learned at mission conference and what we are willing to change to become better and have more success in our area.
Then we went with the sisters to hand off the people that we had met the day before. Only two of the 4 people that we had met opened their door, but the two that did, one of them we had a great lesson with, and she was super interested and really just an all around solid investigator, and they were able to get a return appt with her and all was good with that. And the other one we weren't able to teach right then, but we talked with her for quite a bit and they were able to get an appt with her later on in the week as well. Plus I'm pretty sure if they talk with the other two soon as well, they will definitely be some solid investigators as well. So that was super awesome and we loved every moment of that. Then we went home to eat lunch/dinner and to start making calls to get appointments with people later in the week. One thing that is happening later this week is that we are having a branch service project type thing to help one of the members move closer to the church so that should help with unity and all that. It was pretty awesome because everyone we called we were able to get something set up with them, even with one of the less actives that isn't super easy to get an appointment with. We have a lot of service planned to help with members of the branch and some others as well. We have appointments scheduled with investigators and members and we have Spanish conference with the party coming up this week as well. So this next week is set on becoming our busiest week yet.
Today we have some errands to run, some cleaning to do, and service tonight.
Elder Bertoch
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