Baptism....NOPE!

 Week 48

Wednesday January 13th: Today was sweet! It was Elder Thacker's b-day so we both agreed on taking a good nap in the morning. After, we went and played some ball at the church and then hung out with the district for a bit. Later we went and got our hair cut by Brother Border and then we finally went to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. It was a good pday! At 6:00 we got back to work and taught a couple of great lessons! We found 4 new people to teach in 3 hours! It was sweet! Oh and I guess on that note I might as well let y'all now that the Tennessee Nashville Mission is #1 in the entire world for finding people on Facebook. And #2 in lessons taught. So when people say in their homecoming talks "sorry everyone but so and so mission is the best mission there is" I can actually say it and not be lying ;)) #flex Definitely a good day! 

Thursday: Today we started out by driving clear out to Ceder Hill! You can look at google maps if you really want lol, but it's like a 30 or so minute drive to drop off a Book of Mormon to this lady and she was super cool! We talked to her yesterday on Facebook and she said she'd be interested in the recieving a book. She looked up "Mormon Religion" on Google over night which is never a good thing to do lol, so we had to explain that we are not polygamist right off the bat, but she understands everything on the internet isn't true so she brushed if off pretty quick! We watched the missionary devotional on the way there and back and that was decent. The rest of the day was just a lot of finding, along with a Facebook meeting, and a couple of lessons that popped up from finding. Specifically this one lady named Lauren. She seems super cool and we taught her a little bit about the restoration. She wants to do a Bible study tomorrow, have over a church family, and she also asked US when she could be baptized, it was insane! So hopefully the Bible study tomorrow happens and she is just as cool in person. 

Friday: Today was pretty good! We had a district leader call in the morning with all the district leaders and the APs and President. We pretty much just discussed the things we do and how we do them for the missionaries who are newer to being a district leader. We had our lesson with Melissa fall through because she wasn't feeling well. It makes us nervous that she'll still be unwell for her baptism tomorrow! We did weekly planning and then just did a lot of finding with sadly not much success, just a lot of rejected invitations. However, we had that Bible study set up at the church with that lady, Lauren, that Elder Thacker found on Facebook yesterday. We got a member and everything was set and ready to go and she didn't show up... so that was a great way to end the night lol

Saturday: Melissa's baptism day!!! We spent the morning inviting people, filling the font, cleaning the church, getting everything set and ready to go and Melissa calls an hour prior to the baptism and said she can't make it because she is still not feeling well. We were crushed! We offered her a priesthood blessing, and did everything we could to try and get her to come and she wouldn't. So we called everyone back and canceled everything :( that put a big damper on the morning. We spent the rest of the day finding and had a good lesson about the gospel of Jesus Christ with a girl named Tamia and then another lesson with a guy named John P Smith (not just any regular John Smith he says, but John "P" Smith) it was really interesting. He was either super drunk, or super old and confused, but the Elders in the ward next door are hopefully getting him a Book of Mormon on Tuesday and we'll see where that goes lol. Then we had a great lesson with the Sisters and a guy named Cedrick on the gospel of Jesus Christ again to finish the night! 

Sunday: Today in church Elder Thacker and I had the opportunity to give talks. I gave a talk on the topic of my mission, and prospective elders. A really good talk I would reccomend is given by Thomas Monson. It is called "The Priesthood-" in April 1999, a lot of my talk came from that one. A little later we went and snagged lunch from some members in our ward. Then had two decent lessons, one with a guy named Andrew, and another with a kid named Collin. Andrew's lesson was definitely more reciprocated and it was on the restoration! The rest of the day was just a lot of finding, along with the gospel study class, and a missionary prep class at the other church in Clarksville. The finding was alright, but the classes were good, especially the missionary prep class. The bishop gave a little testimony about how he was inactive for 10 years and all he needed to do was be invited to come back and no one had ever done that until the missionaires knocked and now he's a bishop! He also lost a finger which he believes was God humbling him, so that was interesting too haha. Lastly, we had another lesson fall through with that Lauren girl from earlier this week, then had a last minute call with this lady named Renee and got a member on that, and like I said it was pretty last minute so Renee was a little confused at the beginning, but it ended it up going really well! Then we drove home from the other building and listened to the missionwide devotional, which was just everyone talking about their personal relationship with Christ and it was pretty good! 

Monday: This morning we started off by dropping off a book of mormom to that guy named Andrew from yesterday, that went great! Then we had a lesson with that lady that lives 30 mins away on the phone and IT WAS SO GOOD!! She has read 17 chapters already and said if the print was bigger she would have read more!! We are going to get her a large print Book of Mormon when she comes to church this week like she said she would!! We talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and then I had the weirdest impression to teach her about baptisms for the dead... how random is that?? In the second lesson!! So, I did as I was told and she absolutely loved it! She said we got her REALLY intrigued now!! It was such a good lesson! We did a lot of Facebook finding then had a lesson with a kid named Jay in the military over the phone. We taught the restoration, super slowly and in depth because we could tell he kept getting confused, at the end he accepted a baptismal invite and said he wanted a Book of Mormon, so he met up with the Elders nearest to him and they asked him what he remembered from our lesson and he couldn't remember anything. 🤦‍♂️ I guess at least he got a Book of mormon and those other elders can help him now! Then we had a great restoration lesson with girl named Monique and the sisters in her area are dropping a Book of Mormon to her when she comes to church on Sunday!! Super exciting!! Then we did some finding followed by a companion call with the sisters in my district then a leadership call to finish the night! Long, but good day! 

Tuesday: Really not much to report on today. We just did a ton of finding. We finally got back in touch with Melissa. She said she was just staying silent because when she is sick she can get frustrated and say things she doesn't mean, so she hasn't been talking to us, but she's feeling better so that's good. We had our gospel study class which was good and then the little hand of the Lord moment today was Chris, who was baptized just 2 weeks ago, attended his first activity boys night tonight, he was called as a leader and he serves with another guy in the ward who he will obviously become close with (coordinating meetings, activities, lessons, etc.) The 2nd counselor in our bishopric called us afterwards to tell us Chris was smiling from ear to ear both times he checked in during the activity tonight and he seems to love his calling! His joy brings me joy:) This gospel changes lives and I'm blessed to be able to see that myself, help others see it, and observe the change.