Elder Benjamin Michael Conover Mission Blog : Week 46: Really Hard Week, But The Lord Blessed Us With A MIRACLE

Hello Everyone!

Crazy, hard, amazing week here in Krause, and we are working a ton to find more and more people to teach.

First off, on Monday, we got to teach a man, Pedro Aguero, for the first time. He is an old man, who is Catholic, and super duper stubborn. Let´s just say it wasn't exactly the MOST spiritual, progressive lesson in the whole wide world.

Then, for the next few days, we did a LOT of door knocking and talking to people in the street. It was a lot of hard work, but at the end of the week, we found out that we talked to the most people in the street out of the whole zone, so that was good to hear.

We worked really hard to set a lot of appointments, but unfortunately, every single one of them fell for like 3 days or so, so that left us with a lot of door knocking haha. Oh So Fun.

Something that I like doing, and that often gives quite a bit of fruit, is searching for old investigators, and since we basically have very few investigators right now, I have scoured the area book looking for people who have talked to missionaries before so we can find them and teach them again.

We spent most of Wednesday looking for former investigators, and it was pretty slow going. We met a lot of super duper grumpy people that really did not want to talk to us at all, so that was just awesome haha. We finally went into a little store to contact a man that the missionaries had talked to before, and when we walked in, I asked the man behind the counter for ¨José Rodriguez.¨ Well, apparently that was our friend José, and he got really mad. He like started yelling and telling us to go away and to respect his religion and what not. Things like that dont usually bother me at all, but man, that one hurt, and everyone just stood and watched me. It was a painful rejection.

Needless to say, the first three days of the week were awesome haha.

On Thursday, we had weekly planning, which is by far the most stressful time of the week for me. This weekly planning was no different, and I could feel the dark clouds comin´, but we kept going. Right at the end, we got a text from the Familia Maldonado, canceling their appointment that they had for that evening, which meant we would basically be knocking doors and talking to people in the street again, which just really felt daunting.

On Tuesday, we talked to a woman in the street, and set an appointment for thursday night. We were not going to be able to make it, due to the appointment that we had with the Maldonado Family. However, since they canceled on us, we got to go to the appointment. We went over to the house, of the direction she gave us, and we clapped outside. She walked out, and she was super duper nice to us, and opened the gate to say hi to us. As we started talking, we came to find out that the woman that we talked to in the street had actually lied to us, and gave us a bogus address, which was actually the house of Eliana Romero, the woman who we met Thursday.

We explained who we are, and asked if we could go to her house sometime, and she accepted. As we were leaving, I asked her if her husband would be there, so we could know if we had to bring a man to the lesson or not. She then explained that she just seperated from her husband, and that she has 4 kids with her. She also explained that 12 years ago she talked to sister missionaries, and then she looked at the lesson one pamphlet, and touched it, and she said, ¨that is why I need this so bad.¨ My mouth almost hit the ground when I heard that. It was amazing.

Fast forward a couple of days, and we went to the appointment with Gabriel Maldonado, who is 18 and just got called as ward mission leader yesterday. She invited us in, which I was SO STOKED about, and we got to talk to her for a while, and then we taught Lesson One, about the Restoration. It went SO WELL. She was SO ATTENTIVE and listening to every word. At the end, we gave her a Book of Mormon, and she stopped, and said, ¨I felt really bad and I was passing through such a hard time, and right in that moment, you two came and clapped outside my door, and gave me THIS¨ and she held up the Book of Mormon. As we left the lesson I ran around in the street heel clicking and dancing (missionary-appropriate dances). The Lord blessed us SO ABUNDANTLY. It is amazing how miraculous finding Analia Romero was, and I KNOW that the Lord guided us to her.

Funny

We were walking down the street, and a random dude yelled ¨JOHN SMITH¨ to us.

Me: ¨No, its Joseph Smith, John Smith is the guy with Pocahontus¨

The Ward mission leader here is way into movies, and we were at his house, and he asked us if we have seen the movie ¨House¨ I had NO IDEA what he was talking about, and I was concerned my spanish just suddenly got really bad. Then, he told us the movie about the Shark, and we realized he was talking about ¨Jaws¨ Classic spanish-english pronunciation.

I was making a banana smoothie, and I wanted to break up the ice chunks, so i put a spoon inside. Well, the spoon hit the blade,hit the side of the blender, putting a whole in it, and then dumping my smoothie everyone. I was disappointed haha.

We were walking, and I was on the sidewalk, and Elder Hoagland on the street. Right as I stepped, he said, ¨that concrete looks wet.¨ Too late. I left a HUGE footstep in the concrete, and as I looked up at the business next to me, it said ¨El Gringo¨ CLASSIC.

The Church Is True! The Lord Loves US! And This Is His Church!

Con Amor,

Elder Conover

PS HAPPY 4TH OF JULY (From Argentina)