Here's the Wednesday update! Sounds like all is going well. I love his tracting anecdotes at the end of the email. Especially the man with the parrots... Funny!
Hello everybody!
I hope you have a great Grand Canyon hike. When exactly is that? It sounds like it may be this weekend.
I haven't gotten the easter packages, but I hopefully will soon! Thanks for sending them, and
HAPPY EASTER!
It's pretty exciting, the Branch has got the Walk With Christ this Friday, which should be good. We've been inviting everyone to this Good Friday celebration, and they finally printed the invitation I wrote for the paper! Sweet.
Anyways, I've been doing pretty well. We've had a pretty exciting week. If you want to see one of the more ridiculous days, just scroll down to yesterday.
So... Last Wednesday was ok. We don't really do anything on P-Day anymore. We've got transfers this month, and there may be a baptism that we go back to Chicago for... So we've got to be pretty conservative with miles. We didn't do much until dinner time, when Brother Forrest took us out to dinner. We went to a cafe and got chicken sandwiches. After that, we tried to stop by a few less active members of the Branch, but didn't get a hold of anyone. So we went home, and that was that.
Thursday was a crazy good day. We fixed our beds with Brother Swenson in the morning, then got ready for the day. Everything was done right before lunch time, so it worked out perfectly... For us to go over to Sister Bagnara's for an amazing Mexican lunch, and to teach her friend the Restoration. The friend ended up being 1 hour late, then she ate, then we taught her and gave her a blessing... It was a super long extravaganza, and we were there for about 3 hours! After that, we went to visit Jim (we were 5 minutes late, and he didn't like that). Then went to tract. We had a lot of success tracting, and ended up teaching a few people and getting a return appointment... In the span of about 40 minutes or so! After the quick-tract, we went over to Derek's for dinner. Derek was super nice, and his wife cooked a really good meal. It was pretty great. After eating, the religious discussion began. He wanted to talk about Justification, which is basically the main point of "Born Again" Christianity. We had a very good discussion, and all ended up learning quite a bit. It's kind of neat... They believe that once you accept Christ as your Savior, all of your sins, both past and in the future, are paid for by the Atonement, and you are Justified to be resurrected and live in Heaven. We talked about the Plan of Salvation (and the Restoration, and the Gospel), and it hit me that their belief is really pretty true - that single acceptance of Christ just happened in the Pre-Existance when we chose Christ as our Savior, and to accept our Heavenly Father's Plan! Pretty neat. All of what we taught him really hit him, and he realized that the Restoration has the power to basically shatter his world. He is scared to pray, but we gave him some information about conference, and are praying that he will pray. He's got faith, so once he sincerely prays it's going to get interesting. It probably won't happen soon though, but I guess that's where hope comes in. Anyways, after a second almost-3-hour-long appointment, we were really worn out, and went home.
Friday was great. We stopped by Sharon, who is not doing very well. Her burn is pretty much gone, but her drugged out son is harassing her something terrible. He's such a menace. After consoling her, we went home to plan for the week. Then we got tubed by Brent, and tracted for a while. After tracting and eating a vanilla, chocolate, orange sherbet, pistachio, and arnold palmer ice cream cone, we went over to the Craven's. They are doing very well. Kaden was filling out an application for some scout camp, and it asked what religion he was. He asked his parents, and they said, "Kaden, what do you think we are?" He said, "Mormon." After that, Brother Craven basically said he'll be committed to the Gospel, and I think it'll stick. They've been coming a lot more often recently, and I think they've just hit the next level. That was great to hear, and was a great way to end our day... Because we couldn't get an appointment with anyone else.
Saturday was chock full of conference. We were going to watch the morning session with the Ericksons, but their daughter had a baby, so they had to rush over for that. We called up James, who's got an elusive non-member wife, and asked if we could go over there. He said yes, but we'd have to go play basketball between sessions, so we happily agreed. It was a great conference, and D Todd Christofferson's talk stuck out, which was great for Sister Holmes, who's always at church, but isn't baptized. After that, we played basketball, which was pretty fun. We couldn't play for too long though, because we all had to rush back for conference. We had to rush over to the Vines' home for conference and some hamburgers. That was a great session, and we had a good time there. After that, we went home for a bit, then left with Brother Swenson to President Hunsaker's to carpool. We got to the Hunsaker's home quite early, and got fed a great Thai dinner, which is always good. Then we drove to Priesthood session, watched that, then all got ready to leave... To Steak and Shake! Most of the men in the Branch met there after conference for a late night dinner and shake extravaganza. We carpooled, so we pretty much had to go, although we stayed out way past when we were supposed to be in. President Fredin, of the mission presidency, was there though, so we all figured it would be fine. It was a really good time there, and a generous Brother bought us some really good shakes.
We woke up early Sunday to have MCM before our meeting with President Hunsaker, which was before conference. Those all went well, although we were pretty tired because of them. It was ok though, we had a good day of conference coming up. We went to the Dupin's for both sessions. They have a lot of people over, and have a lot of fun there. The Cravens came, which was great. They get a long really well with the Dupins, so that was excellent. We had a lot of food for lunch, so that was also really nice. After the second conference, we left to do some stop bys. One person we stopped by was Doug, a media referral. We got his address, and a phone number, a couple days ago for my first media referral in the Frankfort area! It turns out the phone number was actually that of a ward mission leader in west Salt Lake City, who was a really nice guy. The missionaries there cover like 24 wards or something, and they're not even in a terribly dense LDS area! Holy cow! He was shocked to hear that we had 8 missionaries in the Chicago 7th ward. After I talked to him for a while, we determined we would stop by Doug's home... Which we did. It went really well, and we got an appointment for Tuesday with him. Oh yeah, it also snowed and stuff Sunday, and was really nasty.
Monday came, and was a pretty crappy day. District meeting got changed to the afternoon, because the Watseka Elders had something come up. That basically killed the entire day. We stopped by a couple less active families in the evening, which was great though. One was a family that just moved here from Sacramento. I can't remember the suburb they lived in, but you may have been there, Dad.
Tuesday was a pretty crazy day. It started off fairly slow, but after lunch it got nuts. We went tracting, and it was really slow for a while. Then we got to this one house, and saw this dog behind it, but still went to knock on the door. No one was home, so we turned to leave and saw this dog standing at the bottom of the steps. He looked at us, then started to run up the stairs. I thought, crap this thing is going to bite us, so took off running. It ran after me, jumped, and tried to bite me in the butt! It ended up hitting it's muzzle right on the back of my hamstrings, but didn't get it's teeth on me. Elder Collier saw the dog chasing me, and 2 more coming from the back of the house, so he took off too! It turns out that they had an "invisible electric fence," so we didn't have to run too far until we were safe, but then we realized the problem... Elder Collier lost a shoe. We had to devise a plan to get it back... Elder Collier was going to step into the lawn on a far side, and I was going to run and grab it, and then come back. We were about to go, but then someone came into the back yard, so the dogs backed off, and I made a run for the shoe. It was pretty ridiculous, but we made it out safe, which was what counts. We also put a pass along card in a plastic easter egg that someone had on their porch instead of in their door. We thought it was funny, and are hoping they'll see it as a sign from God. After that tracting run, we left for the appointment with Doug. It went really really well, and he said afterward that he can really feel the difference when we come into his house, and when he reads the Book of Mormon (of which he read like 8 chapters). He's going to come to the Walk With Christ, and hopefully church. Brother Erickson was there and did a great job of helping us, and befriending Doug. After that, we tracted, and had some more ridiculous experiences. One wasn't that crazy, but was kinda funny. We knocked on this one man's door, and see these 3 little kids come up. They start talking to us, and end up showing us like all of their toys as the dad is kind of listening to us, as we kind of teach a message. It turned out to everyone just talking with the kids, and us then testifying of how families can be together forever. The guy was nice, but didn't want us to come by again. We left, and all of the kids were saying bye, bye, bye, and yelling to us out the window as we walked down the street. Haha. Also, the other day, we tracted and said hi to these girls that were riding their bikes. They told us they couldn't talk to strangers. We said, good job, keep listening to your parents, then didn't talk to them. As we drove by them later, they said, "By hotties" in unison. Haha. Ok so here's the last one. We knocked on a door, and it takes a minute for the homeowner to answer. The door opens, and there stands an older man, in a dress, with a parrot on each shoulder. He told us it was a really bad time, so we got the heck out of there! After all of that, we did some stopbys, and had some dinner with the Swensons. Oh yeah, one of the stopbys was pretty funny. We stopped by Amy, who is the ex girlfriend of Brother Portwood. Her husband is the brother of Sister Portwood's sister's ex boyfriend, who we had met at the Portwood's, and also once tracting. He is really cool, and he happened to be there too! He's a really cool guy, and played the guitar for us. He said he was good, so I asked if he could play the eruption solo by Van Halen, which turns out to be his absolute favorite, so he was pretty excited. He invited us over to see all of his guitars, so we're going to do that next week. He's not a member, but hopefully we can make something good happen out of all of our random encounters! Oh yeah, his uncle is the Styx bassist, so he knows like the whole band! Sweet. Anyways, that ended a pretty crazy day.
Today should be alright. We may go play some basketball or something later. We're going to set up for the Walk With Christ this evening. That's pretty much it.
Well, you all have a great week! I love you a lot, and love to hear from you.
The Gospel is true, and I'm loving my time spreading the word (we also almost knocked on the door of a house that had a sign saying "NO SPREADING THE WORD." I went to put a pass along card in their door, and their door bell went off! I think it was motion activated... but however it went off, we took off running. They fortunately weren't home).
Love,
Elder Bradley Edward McMullin
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