Two weeks now ..........So I basically own this place!

3/12/12

Allright, I've been out two weeks now .... So I basically own this place :). No just messing, the mission is way fun, this week we gave up the car and instead biked, wow it is nice to do some physical excercise, but at the same time it can be hard because we have such a lose of time. Like yesterday I think we were on our bikes for 4 hours, (thats alot of time that I could be knocking doors, or teaching lessons), oh and the bike I have is terrible. One of the Elders, Elder Draper is kinda selfish, and most deffinetly gets on everyones nerves around here, anyways, When I went and got this bike its tire had inflated half way off of the rim, but I had to ride 3 or 4 miles to a members house to fix it. A serious pain, and the rim is bent pretty bad, mostly thats how it was, and also I may have done allittle damage this week by jumping around. But its been fun, and YES IVE BEEN BEING SAFE :)

    So as far as investigators and the city go. The city itself is way cool, we have a big pond out of our back window, and there are actually ponds everywhere. Michigan has alot of really tall and nasty looking trees, it kinda looks like something out of Wizard of Oz, but its way pretty. The part I don't like is that there are no mountains or anything like that. You can't really see anything in the sky if that makes sense. Which feels really weird, and kinda sureal. The town is pretty cool, it apparently has amazing tullips in the spring, but right now I just like all the buildings, it is called Holland for a reason. It was settled by Dutch people and alot of the houses look like they are structured after England and that area. But then again, I'm never in those areas :) we tract in the trailer park homes because there are aton of them, and they are full of people that speak spanish. There is also a College here, Hope College, It is a non denomintional religious college, Kinda weird. But it makes the town fun, and talking to people fun because they think that they now everything :) but we really don't ever bash with anyone we try to keep everything pretty tame. Oh but this week we were talking to this guy in spanish, and he was a character. He had to open his eye with his hand and he was waiting on the corner, we went up and started talking and got into the B of Mormon, well he said he had read it all, and that God isn't in it. Well my comp brought up the scripture about the stick of judea and the stick of whoever being combined. and he went into how that was the seperation of the veil when Christ died. haha I thought he was crazy and might have chuckled and that really set him off, next thing you now he is yelling at us in spanish (so I only got a couple of the words :) ) and we swiftly got on our bikes and rode off into the sunset... Or the dark it was around 8 30

    Now for good news, or bad news. Our best investigator we didn't get to see at all this week, She canceled on us 5 times, and wouldn't tell us what was up. Well she came to church sunday and when I talked to her apparently her kids had been taken from her this week, which is a major bummer and was way hard on her, I guess in the end though all I can do is pray hard for her. But the rest of the people went really good. We have 6 baptisms coming up soon, and we got 2 more dates this week. It's amazing to see the lord work. Last night actually we were with a family that didn't read what we had left them, so we had to read it with them. We just read the first chapter of Nephi, but at the end of the Chapter a girl that wasn't taking the lessons asked if she could keep the book and possibly take the lessons. It deffinetly was the spirit that got her because there is nothing in the first chapter that would compele me to read the book :) Its cool to watch this kinda stuff happen. Also that guy from last week that we met in the library was way cool to talk to. That night he read most of the book of mormon, and in the morning we discussed it and our practices for over 2 hours. He unfortunatly proly won't accept the message for along time, because there's alot of misconceptions that are deeply engrained in him but It still was a great conformation for me of the truthfullness of the Gospel. This kid wore the new testement around his neck and studied and new aton about it. But at the same time his information was missing something. It is amazing to see that the information lost, is the information we have.

   This week, we were tracting down a street around 8 or 830 kinda late but we were just rapping up the day. Anyways we started talking to this man, thats was pretty knowlegable about the history of churchs and got into a pretty interesting conversation, well we started talking to him about the restoration and his son walked up. About half way through his 15-16 year old son walks up who has a little bit of a handicap I'm guessing walks up. Half way through us talking about the restoration the boy interjects. " I I I just have one thing to say... (proclaiming very matter a factly).... I'm in" his dad turn to him, "Son you don't know what your talking about, You don't even know the 10 commandments yet" to this the boy pokes his finger to the air and with pride... well more puzzled "That.. Is right" as he puts his finger down Haha.

Yesterday we ate dinner at a members house and they have a 4 or 5 year old little girl, as she walked in her room I bonked her on the head and just gave her a smile. Well she came back out a couple minutes latter with a letter that read like this "Carphol I almost Krotty Choped You! From:Emily B. To: You" haha it made me smile. I think I'll take a couple of punk kids when I'm older, seems like it could be fun eh.

I love you all and hope that what ever your up to your safe.

Peace, Love, and go with God

Andrew Rushton

Elder Rushton