First Taste of REJECTION

Well I guess you could say this is my first full week but I have been in the field for two weeks so whatever you want to call it.  Well, my days are packed, every day. It seems like we have a lesson every hour of every day. It's pretty crazy out here in Indy. Everyone in this area is very open to hearing what two little kids have to say about Jesus Christ and I'm pretty surprised but that's good haha.

I can't even remember what I did yesterday so bear with me as I try to remember what I did this whole week. There is this family in our ward that doesn't really come to church all that often and the dad has lots of back problems so he always is in the hospital. He asked if we could give him a blessing so that's what we did. From that point on though I feel like we've been over there like 20 times. I don’t mean to brag but I think it's just because they like having the missionaries around or it's probably ‘cause they just like me but who knows, that's all speculation. But this family is very poor and lives in not a great  part of town but they are very nice people and three of their kids are baptism age and haven't been baptized. So we have been teaching the little kids the lessons and we just got them to set a date so they will be baptized on November 2nd which is pretty cool. This will be my first baptism so will be a cool experience for me as well. This last Saturday Brother Wood called us up (oh yeah their name is the Wood family so there's that) and told us that he was having a barbeque and he wanted us to come over. We told him that we had appointments but we would try to come. Sure enough all of our appointments fell through so we got to head over their house for a cook out haha. We spent probably a couple of hours there. Oops don’t know if you’re supposed to do that but hey there were non-members there that we could start teaching if we wanted so I think were in the clear haha. We taught the whole group a little lesson and it was good. The funny part was after the lesson the next door neighbor rammed in to the Wood's car and put a huge dent in it and that began a huge fight between the Woods and the next door neighbor. So me and my comp were just sitting back and watching the great show. I gotta say it was pretty dang funny. The best part was when the next door neighbor went and got two beers to give to the Woods as a peace offering. Just thought that was funny. So that was a pretty chill day.

Yesterday, which was Sunday we got to teach a man from Puerto Rico who’s name was HARRY who strongly believes in the TRINITY. He also knows his way around the bible very well so that was pretty scary. We went over to his house around 2 and had a "bible study" with him for about two hours. We then left on a good note and said goodbye and decided that we weren’t going back there. A little bit later my companion had the strong feeling that we needed to go back there and teach him the first lesson. I was like uhhhhhhh ok then. So that's what we did. We went back there and taught Harry about the restoration. I have no idea why we went back there because that was the hardest rejection we've had yet. He told us that the Book of Mormon is hindering us and it is useless. He told us that we would be able to convert more people if we just used the bible. There must have been a reason though for why we felt prompted to go back there and teach him. Who knows maybe in a couple years he'll pick up the copy that we left with him and read it and find out that it is true. But it was still a cool experience even though he rejected us very hard. He was still nice about it and we said a prayer together and we left. Who knows maybe it wasn't for him why we went over there. Maybe it was for his children and maybe someday they will see the Book of Mormon we left them. 

I had my first experience with eating some absolutely disgusting food. This family that we've been meeting with is from Ethiopia and their culture is a lot different. We went over there and just visited with them for a little but and then the wife comes out with a plate of what looks like nuts. But there was something on top that I'd never seen before and it looked like little balls of peanut butter. But oh man lemme tell you it was NOT PEANUT BUTTER. I ate it and about threw up. Afterwards they told us what the food was made out of and get this. It was a combination of barley, COW OIL, and GOAT MILK. this stuff was absolutely nasty. So thats my first experience with disgusting food. 

That was about all that happened this week. I know there was more that happened but I can hardly remember any of it haha. See you all next week my dudes. 

SEND IT FOR THE LORD

Elder Hilburn

 

One of the Many Nigerian people to teach in Indy