I am not gonna try and sugar coat my mission, it is hard and we have had a lot of trouble with finding new people to share the gospel with. But, we just got our first referral!
YES!
I just got my first one. It is a family of 5 and they are all very interested in the church! They even came to church yesterday for our Stake Conference! (Which was amazing by the way. We had an area seventy come from Samoa, Elder Fata! He even knew my grandparents and when I met him he told me, "wow you even look like a Ho Ching". Haha I hope thats a good thing! He gave an amazing talk.) But back to the family! They are of Indian decent and they ALL want to learn about the church! We are really hoping and praying for them to gain a testimony that this is the true church! A testimony that they can become an eternal family with the first step of baptism!
But another thing that happened and that I kind of want to base this post about...
These past two weeks, we have been working with Aisake(Isacc). He is a good guy and my comp and I got along with him well! He was progressing, but struggled with a bad addiction to smoking and doing drugs. He got down to one cigarette every couple of days, so we asked him if he would like to be baptized and he committed that he'd stop and be ready for baptism! This made me and my comp sooooo happy. This made me especially excited because this is the first person I have ever had commit to baptism! I had seen so much progress in him. He was changing his life. When we first met him, he was living with his girlfriend and he was smoking and doing so much drugs. But when we talked to him about the whole living situation, without a hesitation, he took his girlfriend somewhere else! I was so excited. The only problem with this guy is...he's not honest. His whole life has been a lie. His biological sister lives in our area also, and she is an active member in the church! She was telling us that everything like the lying, the girlfriend, and the wrong friends, started when he became addicted to drugs. So you’re probably wondering....did the baptism happen? The answer to that is no. One of his friends, like 3 days before his baptism, came to us and said "I can't lie to you guys. Aisake is addicted to ice (meth) and he did it this morning!" When I found out, I was crushed. I felt defeated! I was so mad and sad, but it made me realize that addiction RUINS your life. It is so sad. I know Aisake wanted to change so bad, but he let the addiction run his ambition! I now understand why our church is always advising us to stay away from addictive substances! But not just substances, a lot of other things!
I can speak from experience. I was addicted to my phone! My mom always said I was, but I told her no, I am not! haha But I look back on it and man I really was! I was addicted to social media! I see why President Neilson is doing the fasts from social media, because once your addicted that is all you think about and it messes with you head! Like Aisake, his sister tells us that drugs is the reason. Before he started hanging out with the wrong crowd, he was a good hard working person, but now he comes to her almost on the daily and asks her for money because all his money goes to drugs! As a missionary my eyes have been opened to the reason why the word of wisdom is such an important lesson! As heartbreaking and as sad as it was about losing this baptism, I learned that addiction really does MESS your life up! I encourage all of you if you have an addiction to get help and HELP someone you know who has one! Some of you may be wondering if we still teach and try to help Aisake but we physically can't. You wonder why? He got locked up 2 days ago for dealing Ice! He needed money and that's what he turned to! So, we can no longer help him. I hope and pray missionaries will find him when he is released!
I just wanted to share that with all of you today I don't know why but I hope all of you got something out of this! If not just take this, DON'T DO DRUGS! haha Be careful in everything you do!
Oh, and we started a 90 day Book of Mormon reading challenge! So I invite all of you to join me! Just look up 90 day BOM reading and a list should pop up and just follow that!
I love you all! Hope everything is good! Thank you for all the prayers!
Ofa lahi atu kiate kimoutolu!
I can speak from experience. I was addicted to my phone! My mom always said I was, but I told her no, I am not! haha But I look back on it and man I really was! I was addicted to social media! I see why President Neilson is doing the fasts from social media, because once your addicted that is all you think about and it messes with you head! Like Aisake, his sister tells us that drugs is the reason. Before he started hanging out with the wrong crowd, he was a good hard working person, but now he comes to her almost on the daily and asks her for money because all his money goes to drugs! As a missionary my eyes have been opened to the reason why the word of wisdom is such an important lesson! As heartbreaking and as sad as it was about losing this baptism, I learned that addiction really does MESS your life up! I encourage all of you if you have an addiction to get help and HELP someone you know who has one! Some of you may be wondering if we still teach and try to help Aisake but we physically can't. You wonder why? He got locked up 2 days ago for dealing Ice! He needed money and that's what he turned to! So, we can no longer help him. I hope and pray missionaries will find him when he is released!
I just wanted to share that with all of you today I don't know why but I hope all of you got something out of this! If not just take this, DON'T DO DRUGS! haha Be careful in everything you do!
Oh, and we started a 90 day Book of Mormon reading challenge! So I invite all of you to join me! Just look up 90 day BOM reading and a list should pop up and just follow that!
I love you all! Hope everything is good! Thank you for all the prayers!
Ofa lahi atu kiate kimoutolu!
Elder Nomaniđź’•
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