Hello everyone!
I've survived my first transfer! First Transfer Training was a blast! We drove 2 hours to Raleigh the night before to stay the night at the Assistance missionaries apartment because first transfer training started at 8 in the morning and lasted till 4 in the evening. It was a super spiritual experience though and helped us know how we can become more effective missionaries in the Raleigh mission. Because everyone here already believes in God and that he's called prophets and he blesses families, and everyone knows that Jesus Christ was crucified, resurrected, and taken back into heaven, so we focus less on those points at the door and more on God has called another prophet, Joseph Smith, the first vision, Christ's church/priesthood keys restored, and the Book of Mormon. It's tough serving in the Bible belt. I feel like I was sent here because I know nothing about the Bible. Anyways, this week has probably been our best week so far. After First Transfer Training, we applied EVERYTHING we were taught out in the field, and the results were awesome! Like I said we shifted our focus towards getting the first vision out as much as possible and sharing the Book of Mormon and people became more responsive and we've been having better interactions because of it. I think we handed out about 4 Book of Mormons this week to people who we got to actually want to read it, and 2 of those people we got them to pray about it right there on there doorsteps. We are actually starting to find people we can work with now. We found a sweet old lady named Elizabeth who's house we almost passed by. Her husband passed away a few years ago and she discovered that she has cancer not that long ago, we never would have known though if she didn't tell us because shes's so optimistic and cheerful. Her cousin is a member of the church and a bishop in Pennsylvania who has been trying to share the gospel with her since the news of her cancer, he actually convinced her to read the Book of Mormon, and we happened to find her a couple weeks before she goes into surgery. She told us that she believes the Book of Mormon is true and she had plenty of questions about it for us, we sat on her porch for an hour talking and we bore our testimonies and taught her a little bit about the Atonement and the Plan of Salvation. She's my favorite investigator right now, we visited her again a few days later to invite her to church, she said she would come but she'll be out of town with family for Mothers day till her surgery. She took a photo of us and told us she'd adopt us, lol. Anyways, keep her in your prayers!
We celebrated Sister Hogge's birthday, I learned how to ride my bike with no arms, we caught a Virginia Mullet fish, my companion Elder Reed is the new District Leader. We got invited to the biggest baptist church in the area (we're going to need a bigger font soon, things about to go down). Met a 7 year old boy named Michael at a trailer park who taught us about the creation "According to my Calculation God the Father created the Earth through Jesus." It's so much fun knocking on doors that say NO SOLICITING.
One night This guy pulls up into his driveway and so we walked up behind his car and waited for him to get out, we waited about 5 minutes, then 10, then 15. We stood our ground and we were going to win this game. We stood there for about 25 minutes, the dude never got out of his car. and it get too dark. We were defeated.
Anyways, I hope yall have a great week!
Elder Wihongi
