This week has been super awesome!
So every Tuesday is our zone conferences, so that takes up more than half the day, but when it was over we all went to McDonald's, mostly because monopoly is starting and everyone wants to win that million. But when that was over I started my first ever exchange, and it was a really long exchange too. Elder Griffiths and I went out proselyting, we didn't have a car, and it made me appreciate my car so much more! We mostly went out walking to meet with some former investigators and knock a few doors on the way. Mostly people told us to get lost, but we did meet this way cool middle eastern dude with a young family.
The exchange didn't end until Wednesday evening, around like 5 or 6, but Elder Colemere taught a first discussion with a referral we had. It was a young mom who just lost a close family member and has been super down lately, so it's easy to see how the gospel can bless her life. She is super ready for the gospel and is open to everything being taught to her.
So we are really focusing on an investigator I talked about a little bit last week. We got a call from his mom this week and he tried to kill himself. Heartbreaking. We were able to get him to come to young men's on Wednesday and introduce him to the boys his age. Everyone was welcoming and it seemed to go really well. Afterwards we had a super rad lesson with him and his mom. We got back in to see him on Thursday and built a ton of trust, I feel like we are becoming pretty good friends. He went out of town for the rest of the week, so we'll get a chance to see him again this week.
So one investigator's husband, who we've been trying to teach, isn't around during the weekdays because of his job, he's a truck driver, so it's been really hard to get in and try to teach him. But her oldest son got out of prison on Wednesday so we were able to get in to see him on Friday. While he was in jail he got baptized, not into our church, but it was still really awesome to see how willing he is to change his life. We taught him the first lesson and he seemed genuinely interested in what we were teaching him. We left him a Book of Mormon to read, and he read it! We also went over to the house Saturday night and he watched all of Priesthood Session with us! We missed the chance to invite him to baptism, but next lesson we will do that for sure!
Speaking of Priesthood Session, conference was amazing! This is the first time in my entire life, probably, that I stayed awake for all 10 hours! I got way more out of this conference than I have in every other conference I have ever seen. There was a lot of stuff in there that I feel like could help us with our teaching. But Elder Holland's talk was seriously the bomb.
After conference we went to meet with a referral we had gotten earlier in the day, which is our second referral in a week, we went around for awhile and wasn't able to find the house. After teaching a lesson or two we went back to see if we could find the house, we walked down the same exact alley that we did before and noticed a house with the number we were looking for. When we knocked we met this awesome lady who is a southern baptist, but hasn't found a church here in Ark that she likes. We were able to talk with her for 10-15 minutes and were able to schedule a return lesson for tonight! It turns out she wasn't the referral, but she seemed ready to hear our message.
Ark City is an extremely blessed place with a lot of potential for baptism! The biggest downside of Ark is the very present drug scene, especially with the high school aged kids. But there is no obstacle that can't be overcome through Christ, and there are a lot of people that have turned their lives around. God lives and he loves us, and that is the main message we share.
-Elder Andrasko
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