So Elder Ward and I learned an important lesson this week
that we would like to share with all of you. If you use dish soap instead of dish
detergent in the dishwasher, it will NOT work, and it makes lots of unwanted
bubbles on your floor. Just some advice we wanted to throw out there.
So we got a new investigator a lady named Maria. She has a
husband and a son and daughter and her grandkids all living with her, but the first
lesson was just with her. We just did a quick how to begin teaching type lesson
planning to do the restoration with the rest of her family, which unfortunately
still hasn’t happened yet. But she loves us probably more than anybody I have
met in the mission. She is probably like 60, and before we left, she talked for
like ten minutes about how much she loved the spirit we brought and our
charisma, and good looks, and the way we dressed, and were educated, and
professional. So we have this lady in love with us. She really wants us to come
back for one reason or another; hopefully, we can get the rest of her family
all together so they can get baptized together.
So, R- has been good. He came to church with us again on
Sunday with his crazy son. We have taught him the plan of salvation
and the word of wisdom this week. He has problems with everything in the word
of wisdom except tea, so I guess you could call this a worst-case scenario. He
was pretty surprised to find out we wanted him to quit smoking completely and
not just slow down a little bit. He has already replaced coffee with soda, and
honestly, I'll take it if that’s the best he can do, and he is down to a
"little more" than five a day smoking so we need lots of prayers for
him. Teaching him is the funniest thing. He prays in Spanish, but we talk in English.
He invents his own adverbs and puts them at the beginning of every sentence. He
has perfect English; so it’s not like he has an accent. He just uses his own,
invented word choice. The only way to understand his English is just to listen
to every other word and figure out what he’s saying. We are pretty happy to be
teaching our first Ogdenite. Especially since our area borders J1:the Ogdenite
capital. It is the only place in the mission where the English missionaries
cover only one ward, and it’s the highest baptizing area in all of Utah. Ogdenites
EVERYWHERE.
It is a really, really ghetto area. I will definitely never
take my family back to these apartment complexes that we tract at. There is one
that the doors on the outside are all locked probably to keep police out,
honestly, but we found a door around back that goes to the laundry room that
someone broke so we got in that way. Walking in the stairs and to the different
rooms I feel like I'm in a Jason Bourne movie or going to visit a gang boss or
something.
We played Frisbee last p-day with like 18 people, and it
didn’t go as well as it could. Nobody was really trying and just wanted to play
football, but oh well, Elder Ward and I had fun, kind of. It was worth a shot.
So we met Elder Plowman’s parents. They were at Brother Rubio’s house when we
went by to see him, and then Madison was there, too so that was pretty crazy. I
didn't know his parents beforehand, but obviously I knew Madison. That’s always
weird to see someone from home.
Elder Ward and I taught a zone study, and the AP's decided
to come so the pressure was on. It went well. Fast version: we just went
through when the anti-nephi-lehi’s first threw down their weapons, then buried
them, then left that land...then their companions gave them the land of Jershon
and protected them with their armies so they wouldn’t break their covenants. We
very, very boldly, but still lovingly, questioned why we couldn’t be like them
and show enough charity to protect our brethren (fellow missionaries) from
breaking their covenants. Elder Ward threw in a few "How dare you's!” and
told his full conversion story which he has only told once ever before since it’s
pretty crazy and shows the importance of the Holy Ghost. Then I talked about Arizona
and my "trainers" and where they are at now, and how their obedience
as missionaries led them there. It was good. I think the missionaries in our
zone, and the assistants, too, will start to be more obedient. Elder Ward and I
were just happy, because we prayed really hard to have charity and felt like we
did as we taught it and sincerely wanted to help them.
So we went to Kneaders...sooo good...unlimited french toast.
We have a kneaders next door to our apartment. We also went to Olive Garden for
lunch one day. Elder Plowman and I had a breadstick eating contest and that was
after two bowls of soup and a salad. I ate 12 breadsticks for the win...yum-yum.
So we sang to a bunch of college girls. That was
interesting. Weber State was having a relief society thing so the assistants
called us. There were six missionaries. The sisters were in the chapel
listening to their bishop talk about the armies of Helaman, and then he started
talking about modern day stripling warriors. As soon as he did, they started
playing "We'll Bring the World His Truth" as the six of us walked in
from the back singing all the three verses with the guy speaking. I was behind
Elder Lew, and he sings almost as well as Elder Maxwell. He is amazing, and all
the girls were crying…probably because they are all waiting for missionaries. Then
we left.
SO this morning we had a very interesting experience. We
went to my very first apartment of my mission to clean it out. The missionaries
are finally being moved out, because of the cockroaches. (After about a year of
having that problem.) So we went and took all the furniture out. When I lived
there, we always joked about how awful it would be for the people who had to
move the huge couches out of those tight doorways; then I was the one who ended
up doing it. Let me just say that how we fit all three of those couches out is
a mystery. Most of the time, it was wedged/stuck at an angle, and I just had to
hit it with my shoulder as hard as I could to get it out, but after two hours
we got all the furniture out, and they are vacating that apartment.
This week has been good. Elder Ward and I still need to be
more productive in studies and in planning since we get so distracted talking,
but we are working on it. We are tracting about three to four hours everyday
and are almost 25 percent done with our entire area. With an area this small
(smallest in the mission where we cover three English wards), there’s not
really another type of work than that. There are 11 Spanish visa waiters coming
this Monday. Then two weeks from Monday, we are getting 12 new Spanish missionaries.
Only two older missionaries are going home. I have no idea what they will do. They
will have to split almost every Spanish area in the mission. Eight new sisters
are coming in, and we only have seven sisters here including the visa waiters.
They are saying they might start sending Spanish to English. I hope that’s not
me. I do NOT want to serve English. I have no idea how they are going to have
that many Spanish here. Well, I love you all, hope all is well.
Take care,
Elder Bassett
By the way I can email anyone now…..
so you can post my email on the blog and tell whoever to
write me.
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