The thing I appreciate most about Elder Andrew is that he owns a working watch! Elder Truman never wore a watch, and Elder Walker had one but wasn't used to wearing it until his mission. Elder Camper was pretty good, but by the end he was just tired and put me in charge of keeping us on schedule. So the fact that I have a companion who will help me stay on top of things so I don't make lunch run long or forget an appointment or anything like that, is awesome! He also seems to know the doctrine pretty well as far as the Gospel goes, so he will be a great teacher. He also is willing to get up and exercise which is great. We've been jogging up and down Ken's lane this week, which is about a mile and a third round trip. Though his driveway is super steep, so the last 100 yards is harder than the rest of it combined. But I enjoy it and maybe it will keep me from gaining any more weight.
My first week as a trainer was not as good as the last time I was a trainer. They changed the schedule of orientation day, so we pick up the new missionaries on Tuesday afternoon instead of Wednesday morning. That means that Elder Andrew had to wake up at 3 AM at the MTC to fly to California early and do all the orientation on that same day. So it was a marathon day for him.
I say this week wasn't as good as last time because we just didn't have very many teaching opportunities. If you had asked me the week before, how things were going to go, I would have said "Fantastic!", but then all of our current investigators went out of town for the week and some of our less active appointments fell through and we were low on team-ups because people were driving to Utah for General Conference and there was a funeral on Friday that involved anyone that was left. So we only taught like 6 lessons (not counting dinner lessons), and most of those came on Sunday. But I figure that if we can get along and do alright on a week when we have almost nothing on our schedule, once the work picks up, it'll be even better. And because we had so few scheduled lessons, this was the most successful week ever for street contacting. We talked to 71 people this week so that was great!
Having Conference was both a blessing and a curse. While the messages were really great, and it was nice to have it fill some of our time while we were low on people to teach, it also meant driving back and forth to the Stake Center from our area and trying to squeeze people in between sessions. We're already are at nearly 200 miles for the month and it's only been 3 1/2 days!
There were some really good days during the week though. On Friday we had a lot of good things happen. The first good thing was that we got some referrals from Salt Lake City, and so we called one of them and left a message. She called us back, but she had a very thick accent so it was hard to understand her. All we really got out of it was she kept asking "Can you go preach the word of God in Kenya?". We eventually came to an understanding that we wanted to meet with her in person, so we're waiting on a call from her this morning to set something up. Hopefully her next phone call is brief, because it was both frustrating and kind of funny to try and talk to her on the phone. Another nice thing that happened on Friday was that we went to stop by a potential we had talked to on the street a couple days before. We get to her house and realized that it was a house that Elder Truman and I had stopped by multiple times for different reasons (potentials, less actives, etc.). So we had no idea who even lived at this house, but we figured we'd give it a try. And so we knocked on the door and someone answered, first time ever, and he turned out to be the less active guy on our ward list. So he set up a time for us to come back the following week and if all goes well, that will be a part-member family we can start teaching and bringing to church.
Sunday was also a really good day because we finally got Elder Andrew a teaching opportunity. At the trainer meeting President Mullen had asked all of us to take our new missionaries to see someone they could put on date either that night or the following day. Well that wasn't working out for us. Finally some one answered my phone calls and set up a lesson. Funny thing was, he wanted to meet at Starbucks, on a Sunday no less. But hey, we need people to teach and beggars can't be choosers. So we show up and he was super cool and we were able to teach him the Restoration and figure out a little more about where he's at spiritually. He said he's trying to find out which church is right for him. He just started going to church with a friend in the past year, but the one he's currently going to is kind of weird in his opinion. He said that he'd be willing to meet with us on Wednesday's and Sunday's, so hopefully we can keep that going. His name is Isaac, he's probably 17 or 18, and he's about to graduate. Super awesome guy and I can't wait to see where things go with him.
General Conference weekend was good. The talks I really enjoyed from conference were both of President Eyring's, President Hallstrom's, Elder Renlund's, Sister Oscarson's, President Uchtdorf's, and Elder Holland's. We didn't have any investigators attend conference, but then again, most of them were out of town and our potentials haven't really talked with us much except by text.
So later today we'll be texting/calling all of them in order to try and set up a good week, we'll see how things go. I see a lot of potential in the people we have, but if they never set up a meeting they won't progress.
See you soon,
Elder Cornaby
I say this week wasn't as good as last time because we just didn't have very many teaching opportunities. If you had asked me the week before, how things were going to go, I would have said "Fantastic!", but then all of our current investigators went out of town for the week and some of our less active appointments fell through and we were low on team-ups because people were driving to Utah for General Conference and there was a funeral on Friday that involved anyone that was left. So we only taught like 6 lessons (not counting dinner lessons), and most of those came on Sunday. But I figure that if we can get along and do alright on a week when we have almost nothing on our schedule, once the work picks up, it'll be even better. And because we had so few scheduled lessons, this was the most successful week ever for street contacting. We talked to 71 people this week so that was great!
Having Conference was both a blessing and a curse. While the messages were really great, and it was nice to have it fill some of our time while we were low on people to teach, it also meant driving back and forth to the Stake Center from our area and trying to squeeze people in between sessions. We're already are at nearly 200 miles for the month and it's only been 3 1/2 days!
There were some really good days during the week though. On Friday we had a lot of good things happen. The first good thing was that we got some referrals from Salt Lake City, and so we called one of them and left a message. She called us back, but she had a very thick accent so it was hard to understand her. All we really got out of it was she kept asking "Can you go preach the word of God in Kenya?". We eventually came to an understanding that we wanted to meet with her in person, so we're waiting on a call from her this morning to set something up. Hopefully her next phone call is brief, because it was both frustrating and kind of funny to try and talk to her on the phone. Another nice thing that happened on Friday was that we went to stop by a potential we had talked to on the street a couple days before. We get to her house and realized that it was a house that Elder Truman and I had stopped by multiple times for different reasons (potentials, less actives, etc.). So we had no idea who even lived at this house, but we figured we'd give it a try. And so we knocked on the door and someone answered, first time ever, and he turned out to be the less active guy on our ward list. So he set up a time for us to come back the following week and if all goes well, that will be a part-member family we can start teaching and bringing to church.
Sunday was also a really good day because we finally got Elder Andrew a teaching opportunity. At the trainer meeting President Mullen had asked all of us to take our new missionaries to see someone they could put on date either that night or the following day. Well that wasn't working out for us. Finally some one answered my phone calls and set up a lesson. Funny thing was, he wanted to meet at Starbucks, on a Sunday no less. But hey, we need people to teach and beggars can't be choosers. So we show up and he was super cool and we were able to teach him the Restoration and figure out a little more about where he's at spiritually. He said he's trying to find out which church is right for him. He just started going to church with a friend in the past year, but the one he's currently going to is kind of weird in his opinion. He said that he'd be willing to meet with us on Wednesday's and Sunday's, so hopefully we can keep that going. His name is Isaac, he's probably 17 or 18, and he's about to graduate. Super awesome guy and I can't wait to see where things go with him.
General Conference weekend was good. The talks I really enjoyed from conference were both of President Eyring's, President Hallstrom's, Elder Renlund's, Sister Oscarson's, President Uchtdorf's, and Elder Holland's. We didn't have any investigators attend conference, but then again, most of them were out of town and our potentials haven't really talked with us much except by text.
So later today we'll be texting/calling all of them in order to try and set up a good week, we'll see how things go. I see a lot of potential in the people we have, but if they never set up a meeting they won't progress.
See you soon,
Elder Cornaby