Some deets about the week...

Let me give you some deets about the week, I guess. We were very busy! The work in the area is doing really well! We are teaching this older lady named M; she is the mother of Brother G. She is old, Catholic, and really nice. Her Spanish is rapid and slurred. She is really interested though, and I think she will be baptized! The only thing holding her back is that she is has some memory problems. So we really have to teach for retention with her. Then the other day Bro G was cleaning a lot and he fell down and somehow ripped his back up. We went over to give a blessing, and his mom was there as well. So we were able to comfort her and help him out, and really build their trust in us as missionaries. 

Yesterday we met Brother J, who's this LA dude who's met with the missionaries forever. Last week, and actually a lot in the past, we had committed him to set a date to come back to church. He'd always just pulled a James 1:6 and wavered a ton about it. So we talked about the baptismal covenant and when we felt the Spirit really strongly invited him to set a date to come back to church. He said,” Ehhh... why not?. OK, I will set a date to come back to church!" And he did! It was way legit. I have a strong testimony of re-extending commitments because of this!

In other news, we were out with Brother D on Saturday and it was one of those days when the best laid plans of mice and missionaries were going astray. Everything was falling through. After our 5th backup also was no good, we were about to go back to the car, when we hear a loud screeching of tires and a police car comes barreling around a corner, overcorrects, and misses a telephone pole but crashes through an air conditioning unit. The cops climb out, looking dazed, one immediately grabs a baton (oh, and by the way, he’s got a bulletproof vest on) and even though it looks he’s really hurt his wrist, takes off in a dead sprint down the road. So we stood around for a bit to see if anything else happened, then we got back in the car to go to our next backup plan. (If you're counting, this is #6. But who's counting? I'm not.) Anyways the road we take actually leads us the way that cop was heading, and a few blocks later we have to park because there are tons of police tape and cop cars. So we proceed on foot along the sidewalk, and the area is just swarming with bears* standing around, looking for something, talking authoritavely, etc. We do some talking to some street folks and we find out that there were three shots fired, the runner was hit and killed, and he's already been taken away in the ambulance. Now they’re looking for some of the bullet casings. So this was pretty shocking obvi, especially because this is probably one of the nicer parts of our area. Not what you'd expect. So our back-up wasn’t there, but I felt that the Lord had probably brought us to the brink of a crime scene for a better reason than to gawk, so I started talking with this one lady. She was way nice, name of N by the way. Then, (and this is not one of my smoother missionary moments) I ask, "This is potentially a inopportune setting, but have you ever met missionaries from our church before?" And she was like, "Actually, yeah! My brother's meeting with them in Lebanon right now!" Short story shorter, we are seeing her this Tuesday to teach her! YEAH!

Well the work is true. You're the bomb. 

Love, 

Elder Isaac Wright

*Convoy reference if you’re reading this, Dad.