August 24, 2010

This week has been way rough.

I set a goal of baptizing 5 families while I was here. Just this last week, we have had 2 families drop us, 1 that we dropped, and 1 that is currently in the process of dropping us. We have also had 4 or 5 other investigators that have gone down the tubes. So, now we're pretty much all out of investigators. I tried to work so hard to get those families to progress. I loved them, I served them, I helped them, and what of it?

Now we have tons of free time, contacting and finding does nothing. No matter how hard I try to strengthen the members, to help them keep the commandments, to get referrals out of them, I haven't seen any progress at all really. Even when we use the stuff we learn from zone conference nd other things, it still gets us nowhere. Families who were drifting into inactivity when I got here I haven't been able to save, families who are semi-active I haven't been able to get them fully active, and families who are fully active, I can't get to save up money to go to the temple. I've never loved an area or the members as much as I have here. But, it still doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere. When I first got to Cambodia, I just wanted to learn the language and baptize people. Now that I've been here a while, I've realized there is so much more to being a missionary. So, I've been trying really hard to be a missionary, and I haven't seen any improvement.

Maybe I'm just focusing on the bad things this week. But, it's been way rough. On the bright side, we have found 2 new families that might want to learn. One famliy is Christian. We have taught them once. The father used to be a minister in some other church. He knew a lot about the Bible, which I don't know at all. And, he was asking some tough questions. But, I was getting those crazy flashes of knowledge that I didn't know I had, and we were able to not only answer his questions but completely dominate them and revert it back all to the restoration and the Book of Mormon. The family seemed to be pretty impressed by our message. So, hopefully, they go somewhere.

Another positive. There was a lady and her daughter that we found which I was in Branch 12, and they were way awesome. And, I never got to see what happened to her. But, the other week, the Elders in that area told me that she is now baptized and is the new Relief Society President, and that she wants to thank me for finding her and leading her to find the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, which is a way cool feeling.

PS. Remember that one karate tournament that I forfeited because I wouldn't fight that girl? I remember it the other day and laughed at it because it is real funny.