“I hope you brought your track shoes...”

Quote of the week explanation

This Sunday for the fifth Sunday lesson the ward unveiled their new ward mission plan (or, as they're calling it, the “Ministering Action Plan”). That was great news for us missionaries, having the whole ward get lectured about how they need to be helping out with the work. The best part, though, was our ward mission leader. He told us to put on our track shoes because we were going to be running microphones to all of the members who had comments or questions. It was pretty fun, actually. There was a lot of participation, and we had a lot of running around to do. Good times.

Hello.

I realize that that story was a bit of a stretch, but cut me some slack. Nobody really said anything insanely memorable this week, as far as I can recall. 

In terms of the other items of business, though, we had a pretty productive time.

We have been doing a lot of finding, with mixed results. As I'm sure is the case for every missionary who has ever lived, some days don't yield much success. Almost all of our time has been spent finding, and although some days are better than others, we have met a lot of really nice, open people who have agreed to have us back. Only time will tell if something will come of it, but there's promise, at least.

We also finally met one of the people in our teaching pool, Chris. Ever since we arrived in the area we've been texting him almost every day, but we hadn't been able to meet for an actual lesson until Saturday. He is super cool. He is basically a member of the church already, he just doesn’t want to be baptized right this second because he still goes to another church fairly consistently and has ties to people there, so he's somewhat torn. But he has a super solid testimony of the Book of Mormon and even told us that he truly believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet. It‘s just a matter of time before he gets baptized. From what the previous missionaries in the area have told us, he does want to, someday, but is just taking a while before he feels ready.

Not much else to say here, I'm afraid. Just continuing the grind over the next week, that's all.

Ben

P.S. Oh, yeah. Also, my bike broke so that was fun. It was to the point that we had the privilege of walking home with our bikes in tow. 

P.P.S. Also, in this area we actually have dinner appointments with members on weekends, and we ate with a Chinese family who goes to our ward, so that was pretty fun.

P.P.P.S. BELGIUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!