Week 60: Melting, Flooring, and Knocking

Matthew 7:7 ("Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you") unfortunately only applies when we are asking, seeking, and knocking through prayer with God. Cause we've done a lot of seeking, and a lot of knocking, but not many doors were opened unto us.


But that's ok cause it was a good week anyway!

...mostly


When we called to set up an appointment with our lady who is preparing to be baptized... she became our lady who was preparing to be baptized. She told us she knew what we were teaching her was true, but that she was just going to go back to her church.

I could write more than an essay about how much that wrecks ya, but I'll spare us both of that haha. Keep her in your prayers, we are hoping she comes back around.

We did a lot of trying to find new people to teach this week. In large part due to the fact that most of those who we have been teaching haven't been home. Our car thermometer read 111 on 2 different days this week, and was at least in the triple digits during most of the rest of the days. That made knocking doors interesting, cause with as sweaty as we were... I probably wouldn't let me in, either haha. But we found a couple people who said we could come back, so we will take what we can get.


We did get to visit our bible referral couple again. They invited us inside this time. (But before going in, we were asked, "Are you good with dogs?" and before we had a chance to really respond, we were just told, "Okay, just don't panic," which... after this month's dog bite didn't exactly put me at ease.)

A lone, bare purple bulb illuminated the room, (or was supposed to, I guess, but idk how they were able to read). They had a handful of little dogs walking around in there, a thick smell of cigarette smoke, and a large clock built into a painting of Elvis Presley. We took the introduction of the Book of Mormon and made it as simple as we possibly could. They're good people, and were looking forward to reading by the time we left, but they sure make me grateful for all that I know, have, and am.


We also visited another bible referral this week, who apparently skipped her dialysis treatment so she could be home when we came over?? So that was concerning. But she seemed to be ok, and asked if we believed in modern prophets before we even got there, so that was cool. ("Why yes we do!")


We also had our interviews with President Hansen this week, and did a kind of double exchange, where one of our zone leaders went with me to one of the companionships in my district in Camden, and we blitzed with them and that was a lot of fun. ("Blitzing" is just missionary slang for more than one companionship working in an area at a time trying to find people who are interested, not blitzing like the Germans did, don't worry.)

Elder Shelley and I were able to visit with this lady who was a member of the church, but had been kinda dragged out of it by family circumstances. She was so nice. We invited her and her kids to the mutual activity that night, and they came! Plus they gave the Camden elders some pretty promising sounding referrals, so that was a success.

While the Camden elders were at the youth activity, Elder Turner and I stopped for a smoothie at McDonald's. We had been thinking about going to Sonic, but I figured we might be able to talk with more people at Micky D's. Well, that turned out to be a prompting cause both of the ladies at the registers happened to be people who the missionaries had visited and taught years ago, and both of them were open to having them back!

So, while it was with some chagrin that I realized we had more success grabbing a smoothie at McDonald's than we did in 4 hours of knocking doors, it was worth it I guess.

The next day we went to Taco Bell, and didn't have the same luck, but did get a kick out of their sign advertising the return of nacho fries. (Which, I never realized had gone away haha) "THEY BACK / NACHO FRIES"

THEY BACK!

Ahh Arkansas. What a place.


We were invited to a community meeting Thursday night, and we figured we could go see what it was all about and hopefully see what else is happening in town that we could help out with. Hope was awarded something that made them an official member of the "Main Street Arkansas" organization. So that's cool. Way to go, Hope! Afterward, a bunch of people came up and thanked us again for our help at the fish fry weeks ago haha. We met the chief of police and he was super nice, too. He said we could come by to rant or tattle on people any time we wanted haha.

We were invited cause we've been helping out this guy named Bob in his 100 year old building downtown. He kinda got to know us from the fish fry, and he gave us a tour of the building last week. We just showed up in work clothes one day and asked what we could do, and he gratefully put us to work! We've been working on the floor, mostly screwing boards in and whatnot. It's been really fun, and we just about finished what needed to get done this week. It looks good. I mean, it's all gonna get covered up by actual flooring later. But it'll still be cool to come back and say I helped put the floor in that place. One of the days we helped, Bob took us down the street to a little restaurant and we had a good ole southern catfish plate. Between that, how cool Bob is, and being able to do service in a pretty well-air-conditioned building, I'd say we found ourselves a pretty sweet gig.


Today was Elder Petersons birthday, so I found some leftover birthday decorations from past missionaries that never got used, and put them up while he was in the shower haha. And then this afternoon we checked out Old Washington,  a small civil war era town that became the confederate army HQ after Little Rock was taken by the Union. So that was pretty interesting. History is cool! 

That's pretty much the highlights from this week! Hope y'all have a good week and stay cooler than I'll be!  God bless ya, now.
Elder Dahl, your new resident flooring expert*


Tell me something good
oliver.dahl@myldsmail.net

303 West 23rd Street, Apt. 9C
Hope, AR 71801