This past week, I've felt a bit like
my dear friend Marcus Mumford, in that I've been a bit of a 'Hopeless
Wanderer' of sorts. Not as in like, overwhelming, Earth-tumbling
sadness, but in the fact that half the time, I have NO clue what I'm
doing, but at the same time, that's all the fun in it :)
With
the start of a new transfer, I've gotten yet ANOTHER new companion, but
this time, my comp isn't, technically, a reaaaaal companion by
definition as a missionary called to the Cape Verde Praia Mission, but
my comp is what is called a 'Mini-Missionary', meaning one who serves a
'mini-mission'. His name is Elder Rocha, he's from Praia, and he's going
to be serving with me for about a month. A mini is someone who,
usually, hasn't gone through the MTC or had any mission experience, but
is someone the mission enlists for a small amount of time to help out
and be someones comp, more-or-less. With that being said, with their
limited experience and lack-of-training, usually with missionaries, the
mini becomes sort of a 'follower', just someone who kinda follws around
while the missionary does a majority of the work. Not that my mini isn't
good, but the situation is pretty well as such for me. Woooooooooooo
Having
only had two weeks in my existing area prior, and only reaaaally
knowing the people we've been progressing with, this week as been a LOT
of wandering and discovering. My area covers three different zones in
and around Cova Figueira, and I have been to one of them exactly once
beforehand, and the others, I really only knew the people my comp had
been talking to, so this week, I hopelessly wandered :) A lot of the
time, I had NO clue where to go, so I jsut talked to legitimately every
person I came across and practically begged them for 10 minutes of their
time to share my message with them. It's actaully been jsut kinda fun,
and ALWAYS awkward. It's been tough for me to jsut push past the awkward
point and just do it anyways, cuz otherwise, I'm never gunna get
anything done. Hopelessly wandering isn't aaaaall that bad sometimes :)
One
of the zone we have is call Tenteira, and it happens to be about a 40
minute walk away, so I'm going to kae an effort to head out there at
least once a week. This week, when we got out there, I knew pretty well
nobody, so I just went about with my team of three followers (my mini,
ward mission leader Danny, and Adriano, this 15-year-old who lieks us)
and talked to everyone we could come across. It didn't neccessarily come
out with the results I wanted, we taught a few really old people who
really have no desire to do anything more than just hear the 'bom
palavra de Deus' (good word of God), and also taught a younger Adventist
guy, who told us that Christ kept Saturday holy when he rested in the
tomb on Saturday before he ressurected on Sunday. That was a classic
response, loved that one. Basically, I'm just on the work of wandering
around a getting to know every house and every person until someone is
willing to really recieve the message, cuz for most people here, it just
kinda stops at the surface. For a majority of the people here, if not
all, our message isn't something new, because missionaries have been
here for years and years, and bascially everyone has talked to the
missionaries before, so it's tough sometimes to find those lights that
keep ya going, but it'll all come in it's due time (or so I'm praying!!)
I'll give ya one of my more proud moments of the week,
and a true sign of my desperation just to sit down and teach people, one
day it was DEAD quiet, and I wanted just to get in someones house and
teach them more than ANYTHING. I saw this one kid, who's like 16 or 17
that I've wanted to teach, and he was playing soccer with a buddy, so I
was like,'hey, let me play with you guys!' so I played with them for 5
minutes, had some fun, and was like, 'heeeeeeey, you guys got 5 minutes
to sit down and talk?' and the kid looks at me and is like, 'weeeeeell,
I'm actually working right now, uhh...' and I was all like, 'okay, come
on man, we just spent 5 minutes playing, lets take 5 minutes, I'll tell
you a Book of Mormon story, and we can all go on our way', and he was
like, 'uhhhhh, okay, we can do that' AND I TAUGHT THEM A LESSON AND FELT
LIKE A KING. Maybe it was a little decietful, but it worked, and for
that, I was pretty darn happy :)
No comments:
Post a Comment