Tuesday, October 6, 2015

"Why did you hit yourself in the head with a Rice Krispie treat?" "Because I'd never been hit in the head with a Rice Krispie treat before." - Elders Hawkes and Greer

Bro. Dreesen's boat.
From 9-15-15

Fair logic.

This week, we...
- Get mildly disappointed at the news that "hurricane remnants" would
be moving in
- Knock on the wrong door and teach a family
- Meet a Muslim that doesn't like Arabic speakers
- Have district meeting without Arabic North
- Give a church tour at an Emergency Preparedness Fair
- Have a combined Arabic/ASL lesson with the ASL Elders
- Have a great lesson on temple and family history work in Gospel Principles
- Have Zone Conference

First off, on Tuesday night Sis. Dreesen told us that there was a broken-up hurricane that would be making its way into San Diego, which we thought meant rain! :D

There wasn't rain.

Okay, there was some flooding in the mountains, but for the most part it was just suffocatingly humid last week. I should also mention, on a rather unrelated note, that the people we added last week with a date dropped us on Tuesday night.

Anyway... on Wednesday we were wanting to meet with a potential who gave us some rather vague directions to his complex. So we walked into one complex, knocked on the door, and it turns out it was the wrong one. But the family invited us in to share the message anyway! We shared the message of the Restoration and the family was very attentive. And then we invited them to be baptized. After that they kind of flew to pieces. "We've already been baptized!" Elder Greer asked them, "If God told you to get baptized again, would you?" "No! We've already been baptized and God wouldn't say that to us!" So we thanked them, shook their hands, and left. Oh well. Also on Wednesday, we drove to teach English to عدل (Adil, the Muslim man) but realized we had forgotten to ask for the keys to the building. So we had to
frantically call the San Diego Elders and then عدل and then back to the Elders to get things worked out. Thankfully, we got the keys and had a great lesson.

On Thursday we were parking the car and saw a man sitting outside his apartment complex. We introduced ourselves as missionaries and asked if we could share a message with him. He agreed and invited us in to teach him. As we were asking him some questions to get to know him he told us he was Muslim and that he'd be interested in learning more. He
shared with us that he doesn't like other Arabic-speaking people because "All they do is talk and think I'm dangerous." He wants to move to New York and be an American more than anything else. We've got a visit with him on Thursday to see if he can be taught, so we'll see what happens.

A few people told us to be particularly careful on Friday since it was September 11 and Arabic speakers caused that attack. To be honest nothing really happened that day. Elder Jackson did a temple session with President Schmitt and all the departing missionaries (since the temple will be closed for the next month they did it early). We delayed district meeting so that North could come but the session got out late, so they showed up on the tail-end of district meeting.

Also on Friday the Hillsdale/Jamul Sisters were going to be helping out at the Jamul Emergency Preparedness Fair and they needed us to be there to help do church tours and man a booth. Not as many people came as we would have liked (or expected), largely because of the humidity. But we were able to give a church tour to a disenchanted Catholic, so
that was cool.

On Saturday the ASL Elders called us and said they had met a deaf Chaldean on the street who wanted to learn ASL. So we went with the ASL Elders to go contact them and see if they were interested. The deaf lady was very kind and the ASL Elders told us they were surprised how similar her sign language was to ASL. Meanwhile, we talked with her brother to see if they were interested in learning. I'll spare you all the details of the conversation, but it really just boiled down to
"We're Catholic. But if you want to come by sometime, ehh... why not?" So we'll see.

We had an English lesson right after that. We had met a young man named Steven on the street and put him in Area Book Planner, but forgot to send it to the Fuerte Elders. So we put him in our plans for Saturday. When we went by, we remembered who he was and were initially unsure of how to proceed. But he said, "I've got time right now if you want to share something with me." Thankfully we had some English materials with us so we shared the Restoration. We invited him to be baptized and he said he would be if he knew it was true, and then asked if we could pray for him so that he would have the faith necessary to make the changes in his life and be baptized. It was a really powerful lesson! And yes, we did send his information to the Fuerte Elders right after that. :)

On Sunday محمد (Muhammad) came with his non-member wife, Jeni. In Gospel Principles we taught about temples and family history work. Jeni was very attentive and interested in hearing it. When we read 1 Peter 4:3 with her (The Gospel preached unto the dead) she looked at us and Bro. Seba and said, "I've never read this before. What does this mean?" The wheels were definitely turning. I hope this lesson really helped her think a little more about joining the Church.

Yesterday we had Zone Conference. We talked about member-missionary work and how we can work more closely with the members. It was really great and I gained a lot of insights as to how to do better. Aside from that, we helped Bro. Dreesen out with the new boat he bought on Saturday and studied. So that was our day!

That's it for this week! Thank you to all of you for sending me letters and email. I love getting both letters and email, so don't be afraid to write back! My physical address, as always, is in the signature of this email!

-- إلدر هاكْس (Elder Hawkes)
Elder Christian Hawkes
California San Diego Mission
7404 Armstrong Place
San Diego, CA 92111-4912

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