Its a beautiful morning in Coquitlam. Here I am once more
after another week in the mission. The more and more I'm here, the more my
feelings of inadequacy are present. The past few days have been exhausting.
We were unable to see either Leah or Jesse this week. Both
of them have busy lives, though Leah did go with her church friend to the
General Women's Broadcast Saturday evening, and she really liked it. I
suppose you can put your money on the prophet if you want to have a
meaningful spiritual experience!
The only lesson we taught the first half of the
week was to a man named William. He's Sudanese and is a strong believer in
Christ despite the tough circumstances he's been put in. When we taught
him the Restoration he didn't seem to like the Book of Mormon very
much. He didn't like that it was adding to the bible and that what we were teaching was more
about Joseph Smith then Jesus. In short, almost every common Christian's
concern about Mormons. Then the member we were teaching him with spoke up, and
explained that the bible and Book or Mormon were like 2 nails. A sign was the gospel.
If you nail in one (the bible) in the middle of the sign to a wall, you
can swing the sign right or left easily. If you nail both the nails
one to each top corner however, the sign will not shift, but stay in one place. We
bore testimony, and after a bit of thought, William excepted the invitation to
read it!
We also taught a guy named Eric who loves
football. He's played a year with the BC Lions and now he coaches a high school
team as a hobby. He grew up in a church but didn't go to church very
often. We taught him the Restoration and things were going great
until his wife walked in the apartment. Eric said "Hey honey these
are my friends, Elder Samis and Elder Nielsen! They're Mormon
missionaries" She forced herself to be polite and said "ok that's
great", though the 3 of us knew she was thinking otherwise. She went away
to a bedroom and didn't come out.
Beyond these 2 visits, we've visited a few members, and
went finding a ton Friday till Sunday. With the streets in downtown Coquitlam
not very busy these days, we went tracting a lot. We were given a potential
investigator named Peter who is really interested, but they only got the street
he lived on,which was really long, so we went right ahead and knocked out
the entire street. Despite being out 20 months, I'm still finding it
really difficult to find the words I need to say, to talk to people.
Elder Nielsen doesn't have this problem and quite often seems to be taking over
the conversation as soon as there's a couple seconds of silence. Its a
crippling feeling, and it seems like no matter how often I study the
lessons and pray to have the spirit tell me what I should say when I need to, it
doesn't come to me very easily.
Its a good thing general conference is coming up soon
because maybe I'll find my answer on how to fix this really irritating problem.
On top of that, the Quorum of the 12 needs 3 new apostles, so this
will perhaps be the most interesting general conference I've lived to
see. It will also be the last I'll watch on my mission. With this week
finished, I thank you for your thoughts and prayers. If it weren't for them, I
don't believe I could serve a mission. Have a great week!
Elder Maclean Samis
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