Well… this has been an interesting week this week. First well, Ok mom, I didn’t tell you some stuff because I didn’t want you to worry. A couple of weeks ago I had some stomach issues and the bathroom became my very close friend. Sunday, it stopped, and then Thursday night it started again. I called the doctors and we got everything figured out and everything’s all better. SO DON`T WORRY. I GOT IT TAKEN CARE OF.
That was just another stressful part of the week. I got a letter a while from Aunt Julie a while ago (by the way thanks A TON Julie, they are so great and it’s better than emails. I’ll have to do something ginormous when I get home to say thanks) and Spencer Luke told Elder Luke that he needs to be outside his comfort zone to really be learning. That phrase has proved prophetic for his cousin too. I was really starting to get the hang of Kanasin. I never got lost anymore, the ward was getting a lot better (we started out with about 120 people in sacrament and finished with about 150 when I left). We were finding people to teach and things were really going well. I got comfortable and changed to a new area. And getting to know a new area is a little bit different. Neither one of us know the area really well. We get lost a lot and things like that so thanks a lot Spence for prophesying my problems. Na, actually it’s true I’m learning a lot, one of them is learning to trust on the Lord. If I have The Spirit with me I will know if I am doing something wrong, and will receive the guidance to do things better.
Another challenge from this area is that the people are a lot more closed up. It kind of reminds me of when in Alma the people were dressed in fine clothes and wouldn’t listen and then the people that were “more humble” were ready to listen. The contacts here are really hard. They really don’t want much to do with us. In Kanasin, you had about a 15-20% rate of someone accepting a visit, then after were all the probabilities if they would be there, if they would accept our visit and things like that. Here it’s like 5%. The thing that I'm going to need to learn to master here is to squeeze references out of people. References weren’t a big part of it in Kanasin. The people were more accepting. Well I'm out of my comfort zone again. Thanks a lot Spence. =)Of the people that we are teaching, one of them was a sweet reference (a ward member knocked on our door and showed us where the reference lived and told us that we had to go with him right now to go see him). His name is Angel. He listened to the missionaries for a couple weeks about five years ago, but it wasn’t really all that for him. We wentback Tuesday and we were talking a lot about prophets and things like that. We taught the first lesson and the ideas of prophets today are really scary for him because he doesn’t want to follow a false prophet, but he is super willing to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. He also asks a lot of good questions. He doesn’t know ityet, but the things are looking pretty good for him. He took his Book of Mormon to work with him. =) Also we actually got contacted by a guy that was pretty sweet. His name is Emir. He is from Belize and speaks English and Spanish. He asked me what time it was in English and from there we started talking. I had just been talking to my companion a few minutes earlier about The Atonement and so I talked to him about it. We kept talkingand turns out that he has already made some big changes in his life. He was a drug addict and an alcoholic and is still in the fight with alcohol. When it got the time to ask if we could come by and visit him he was really acceptive. We were super close to his house and we walked to his house to show him. We gave him the restoration pamphletto read and when we came by later on in the week he had read it. It was really sweet because it got him thinking about if his baptism was done under the Authority. I remember talking to dad before the mission about how explaining “no’ nicely to that question is one of the hardest and most delicate things to do. But he was really into it. Wecame by the next day to do service but the problem with him is that he left Monday to go get his wife and kid from Belize and bring them here. In a few weeks we’ll check back with them.Well those were the things that made the week get along. Being sick wasn’t the funnest. Thursday night and Friday morning was the really long battle. This was before I went to the doctor and I was having strange thoughts. My mind settled on the idea that I had stomach cancer and the President was going to have to send me back home even though Ididn’t want to go. Kind of a strange night. But I do not have cancer, just a weird bug. Took my pills and my phantom cancer went away. I`M BETTER MOM.The new house is nice. We don’t have over head fans like in the old house so it’s a little bit hotter. It is bigger though. We have two rooms instead of one and the kitchen is just as nice (with one counter!). So far in this week I have seen five cockroaches so thatcould be interesting in this house. My new companion has 3 changes more than me and doesn’t know that Elder, Mom. He’s a convert to the church too! I didn’t know that and we had a long talk last night how we both came to know the truth through our own ways. He lived with his mom and step dad. His mom supports his decision, but not financially. Ifelt about three inches tall when I talked about my whole family being members and having a small army of support behind me back home. My respect grew a lot for him.Well gotta run. The spiritual thought for the week is hope. There’s a Mormon message by Elder Holland who had to do some pretty rough stuff. His message is what I’ve learned this week and what I Echo to everyone else. “Don’t you quit. Don’t you quit. There is good times and help ahead. Don’t you quit.” Well I'm not going to quit, even if I do havephantom cancer. I won’t quit. Even if it is blazing hot outside (which by the way, it is getting really hot too). There are people who need me and they exist. Those great spiritual experiences will only come about if I keep working and don’t quit.Well now I really got to run. Love you all. And don’t quit! (Well theGood Race, don’t quit it).
Con Amor
Elder Mackay
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