Mission Update 4/7/10

I was gone from the 8th until the 16th, so have lots of posting to make up!! Here's Elder M's email after his first week in his new area:

Hello family,

This has been a great week! We had a good Easter, and I hope you did too. What did everyone do for Easter? It sounds like you had a good Grand Canyon trip! Are you going to do it every year now, Caitlin? Good job getting into so many great schools too! It will be nice to say you turned down them all to go to BYU. Are you excited to come to Arizona G&G? Are you feeling better Tay?

I think it is pretty neat that you are going to have a stop at Midway airport when you go on college visits! That is right next to my old area of Stockyards. You can look out the east windows and see the part of my area we never went to! I saw a member from that area that came down to Morgan Park for Conference, and it sounds like things are going well. The Chaparros, who we focused on are doing great!

So anyways, I'm now in Beverly and it's awesome. This area is sweet. We've been calling people like crazy and have set up so many appointments. There are a lot of potentials because this area had so many people in it until recently. It was a little weird at first, because neither we or the Sisters had an area map... So we accidentally contacted some people in their area. We live really close to the Church, and it's a pretty nice neighborhood. Our apartment is dilapidated though, and we had to do a lot of cleaning and throwing away. We walked into a dirty apartment, but a pretty good investigator pool. We've actually got 2 baptisms coming up!

Charity is a part member lady that has been investigating for a while, and is getting ready to be baptized! Elder Gates is going to come back to do that one. We've also got Tonika, who secretly investigated the Church for quite some time before coming to church a week and a half before we moved in! She is so awesome! She's super smart, and is committed. She takes notes as you teach, and loves to do her reading assignments. She has a boyfriend that introduced her to the Church in 2008, and he's going to baptize her. Awesome.

We also have some more sweet investigators... I'll explain a little bit more about them all later though. Here's some of what happened this week:

Wednesday was crazy. We said a lot of goodbyes and also had to drive some of Geneva's stuff to the Mission Home. We just barely missed the Greenie Giordanno's lunch! Lame. That took forever, but was good to do. We said goodbye to a lot of people including Mike, the Apodacas, the Gamboas, the Barlaugs, the Housers, the Matucks, and others. It was sad saying goodbye to the Popes, Matucks, Barlaugs, and everyone else that made so much progress over the last several months. It was nice already having the goodbye to the Hwangs and others out of the way. Geneva had to come spend the night with us because of their apartment getting closed. It really hit me about moving after our last stop by. It was a sad feeling. It was exciting to have a move though. I can only possibly be in Beverly half as long as I was in Naper 4.

Thursday was wild. We came to transfers, which was great. We couldn't fit both of our stuff into the car, so we had to have the Hyde Park Elders help us drive some stuff down. We had an appointment that was set up soon after the meeting. We went down to visit Charity. That went great. She's pretty much ready for her baptism. She was confused about prophets, so we taught with a couple of analogies, which she understood. After that, we went over to visit someone named Sister Flowers. She likes to read the scriptures with the missionaries, so we read out of the Pearl of Great Price. We then went to the church and met some members. We got to meet the Bishopric, who was there for a Bishopric meeting. That went well. They gave us a couple of names of people to contact and teach. We gave the church key to the Sisters, who needed it for an appointment they were going to have there. We got referred to an ill member, who we went to the hospital to give a blessing to. It went well.

Friday was great. We had our first appointment with Tonika, and were in awe at how prepared she is. It's a really different teaching environment than any other lesson, because she is so knowledgeable and attentive. We covered a lot more than we had planned on. After that, we went to visit Brother Moore, who randomly called us. He's an awesome member who used to be the Ward Mission Leader. He's a great member missionary, and will be a great help for us. He told us all about the Ward too, which is pretty neat. After that, we went to eat some lunch. My companion can really eat. I'm pretty sure my missionary money is not going to last very long, because we go out to eat often. They stopped having the dinner calendar in this Ward because there was too much confusion with missionaries areas... Thus, we don't have many dinners. After lunch, we went to visit the Ervin family. They're a part member family, and had a couple of friends over, who we taught. Sister Ervin is an ex-Jehovah's Witness, so she does a pretty great job at inviting others to take the missionary lessons. That went well. After that, we went to the recent convert / part member Rhodes family home. They're awesome! We're going to work with Brother Rhodes and try to help him prepare for baptism. We then went to visit the Hills. Eddie Hill is a 3 year member who was baptized in Mississippi. He is pretty awesome. He and his wife live with Caraline, who is not a member. She is shy and because of that hasn't come to church. She didn't sit in, but we got another appointment to teach her. If she will come to church, she'll pretty much be ready for baptism.

Saturday was Conference day! There were a lot of great talks at conference! I especially liked President Uchtdorf's from Priesthood Session! We went to lunch at the Sutarik family's home. They are really nice. It seems like just about everyone in this Ward are converts. They were baptized when they were young, and are a great family. They got us Chinese food. Other than watch Conference, we cleaned and fixed up our apartment! We also made some calls. I've spent a LOT of time on the phone going through old records. It's been super productive. We have been able to set up a ton of appointments with formers and potentials, as well as recently taught current investigators.

Sunday was a good day. We met with the Zonies in the morning to give them the old Chicago ZL stuff. It's weird, but kind of nice, to not have to take call ins and hunt down people that stay out late, etc like these Elders have to. After giving them their stuff, we went to teach Tonika at the church. We rolled through some more commandments, and also had her interviewed by Elder Davis. That went great. She's pretty neat. She's quite the political activist. We had some fun discussion when we taught about obeying and honoring the law. After that, we had more Conference! It was great. We had MCM in between sessions. That went well. Our Ward Mission Leader's name is Brother Beer. He's a good guy, and is getting ready to go to BYU Law School. We had dinner with his family after conference. That went well. It was a nice Easter dinner! We had some investigator that was taught quite some time ago call us, so we went way way down to teach her! Our area is huge. It took us a long time to drive down to teach Sherri Matthews. She lives on 170th street. We cover north to about 69th or something. That's 100 dense blocks of Chicago... And Lake Calumet. She is a teenage girl and has been taught with some siblings. The mother didn't even know we were Mormon, so we've really got some work to do there. We set up an appointment to teach the whole family.

Monday was a good day. We had our District Meeting, which went well. After that, we went to do some service for Sister Flowers. We then went to visit Esau, who is Charity's husband. That went well. We're getting things ready for the baptism. After that we went to visit Victoria, Arrow and Mercedes. Arrow and Mercedes, the kids of Victoria, were recently baptized, and are great. Victoria is who we want to focus on and help her prepare for baptism. After this, we made a ton of calls and set up a lot of appointments. We then went to the Hills again, and got to meet Caraline. We talked about the People of Alma, and trials that the Lord places upon us. It sparked some really productive conversation, and Caraline really opened up. She invited us over for a Tuesday night Catfish Fry! She's from Mississippi, and told us we just had to have some catfish.

Tuesday was awesome. Our first appointment with a member fell through. We were down there trying to find the apartment, and stumbled across a lady that accepted the invitation to investigate. That was pretty nice. We then went out to tract, and were able to find one person there who's going to investigate. She is not very solid though. She gave us her telephone number, so I wrote it and her address down. I then read the number back to her, but intentionally changed one number to make it incorrect. She told us the number I read was in fact her number. We now know she gave us a fake number... Ta da! After that, we went over to Brother Butler's home. He called us because his brother was in the hospital recovering from a surgery. He fed us some lunch, then gave us instructions on where to go and what to do. We met a neighbor of his out in the street, and he too accepted the invitation to investigate. The Lord has really been putting people into our path to teach! After this, we went to give the blessing. That went well. The man just got out of brain surgery, so he was confused, but it went well. We then made more calls, and got some more set up. At this point, we really don't have much time at all to fill with appointments. We're having to schedule things pretty far in the future now. After this, we went to the Rhodes home again. We had a lesson that went pretty well. We then went to the Hills for an awesome Catfish Fry! That was great. They are so awesome! Eddie is a pawn shop owner, and it sounds like a pretty cool line of work. After that, we went in for the night.

Today was great. We had a lot of issues trying to find a place to email. There was a ridiculous wait at the first library, then the second one wasn't open. We got some food then came back to the second, and it was then open. I sent that quick email. We then went to the church where we played basketball and volleyball with the District. That was pretty fun. After that, we found out we locked the church key inside, and had to go through a really crazy process of getting it back. That's pretty much the day!

Well, things are great! I love you and appreciate all you do for me. Thank you so much for the packages and the prayers! Keep reading the Book of Mormon. See how fast you can finish it!

Love,

Elder Bradley E McMullin