August 9, 2017

We hit our half way mark this week.  It has made me want to work harder and be a better missionary.  

We have had a lot of discouragements lately.  People are nice to talk to us here and when we ask if we can come teach them the gospel, they even let us come to their homes....ONCE! 

When we meet with them, they can't say "no" to scheduling a second appointment (which they actually don't want) so they schedule another.  

When we show up one of the following happens:

They aren't home.  

When we call to say we are on our way and remind them we are coming, they have an emergency at the hospital (I can't tell you how many people say they have emergencies at the hospital).  

Once they recognize our phone number, they won't answer it. 

Other times they will answer the phone and deny that it is them and say we have the wrong number and no one by that name lives there...even when we recognize their voice.  

Today we went for an appointment (to a lady who had a hospital emergency during our last scheduled appointment).  The woman had her rather large neighbor sitting on a chair in the open doorway of her apartment.  When we asked if Norma were home, the kids inside said she was in the bedroom.  The neighbor in the doorway emphatically told us "NO!", that Norma had stepped out, that she was babysitting, and then glared at us.  

No one can just tell us honestly they aren't interested so we get led along many times.  On our end, we can't just give up so we keep trying while getting rebuffed each time.  We have to give the Lord an honest try!  But it does get discouraging.  SO MUCH FUN!!  

Anyway, I just had to vent.  Sorry.  Missionary work is great and when they accept the gospel it is worth every missed appointment in the world.

We had a CRAZY thunderstorm here a couple of nights ago.  Hundreds of lightening strikes, rain and wind.  Our power went off just after 8:00 pm and didn't come back on until around 1:00 pm the next day.  Of course there was no air conditioner running in the bedroom, so we had to open all the windows. It was a spectacular show and so powerful that I almost screamed out in fright a couple of times.  Even the Cruzians said it was a bad storm. But we all survived.