Back to the Drawing Board

October 27, 2014

Good morning everyone!

Another great week has passed in North Carolina. Every week here presents its own challenges and difficulties, but I always come out having learned something new! Whether that be emotionally, physically, or spiritually, the experiences I have here present great opportunities for growth.

So about that subject up there ^. The reason I say "back to the drawing board" is because that's where we've come to. Over a series of events, most of our teaching pool has been depleted and we have a lot of doors to knock!

So here's a few things that happened.....

O and P, the people we thought were GOLDEN attended their own church last Sunday and...they apparently loved it. They hadn't been in years so returning rekindled the excitement that they used to have for their church. So O gave us a call (while I was napping during lunch. Yes, we're allowed to nap. In this mission we get an hour break for meals so I wasn't being disobedient I promise! If you don't agree with that, I encourage you to read Mosiah 4:27 :)) and she said that she appreciates all that we taught her but she'd like to stay with her church. We then visited P the next day and he said the same thing. He knows the Book of Mormon to be the word of God, but he won't take any action. We plan to visit them again when O is there to see if we can save their souls :)

A and M had an interesting experience as well. They gave us a call and told us that they had read some stuff that they were just weirded out by (such as becoming a God, temple ordinances, etc) and that they had a lot of questions for us. So we met with them and they're convinced by all this anti Mormon stuff they're reading that Mormonism is a Satanic cult and that we are a lost people. He said he wants proof that the church is true and that Joseph Smith was actually a prophet. We explained to him the need for faith and asking God if these things are true, but he doesn't like that answer. So we plan to see them one more time and be a LITTLE more bold and see if they take some action in reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. So I'll keep y'all posted on them.

All of the other investigators and potential investigators are either uncontactable or just flat out don't show any interest. And that leads us into this week. We have lots of plans to go out and knock doors(because knocking doors works in Clinton) this week and hopefully we have a lot of success with that. During accounting with our District Leader last night he was like "Your teaching pool went from 17 last week to 5 this week. What happened Elders?" Haha kind of sad but that's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes en la obra misional.

Oh, here's a story for ya. We talked to Moses on Tuesday! Moses! In the flesh! Hahaha it was this black guy from Panama who spoke Spanish who believes in reincarnation. He said that in his last life he was a fish in the Amazon River. I asked him how he knew and he said that God showed him. And then he said "Like I also know I was Moses." So that was pretty crazy. Haha maybe I'll say a prayer tonight to find out who I used to be. I'm hoping I was Nephi!

So that was some of my week for ya. Something I've seen out here is that every day is super hard in its own way, but every night I get ready for bed and I'm able to look back on the fruits of the day and kind of just smile. It's something that's hard to explain unless you've experienced it for yourself, but it is true.

Love y'all,

-Elder Landon Carroll