Time has no substance in the mission. It doesn't exist. It comes and then immediately it is gone. I can remember the day going into the MTC like the back of my hand. I woke up, went to the gym and ran with my Dad, came home and finished packing, rode in the car down to Provo, stopped at the bank to cash a check that a friend's parents gave me, went to Sensuous sandwich to have my last supper, drove to the MTC, got out of the car and my good friend David Graham escorted me into the MTC. It honestly feels like it was yesterday. That is why I can remember it so well. People tell me that the next year is going to go by even quicker, but I don't know how that is possible. This year has already flown by.
Hitting my halfway mark is exciting, but also depressing in a way. I don't want it to be halfway over. It is very hard for me to look at myself and measure how far I have come. You just get use to how you are. I don't feel like I have really changed that much, and that upsets me. I always imagined the man who I would be at the end of my two years. Now that I am at my one year mark I feel like I should be half the stature of the man I envisioned. I don't feel like I am quite there and that makes me sad. I know very well though that I could be there, but just not notice it. I am going to work so hard over the next year and consecrate myself to this work. I know that God is molding me into who he wants me to be, and maybe that man I envisioned isn't the person he wants me to become. I know that God's vision for me is much greater than any vision I could ever come up with.
This week has been a good week. I will tell you a bit about some of our investigators since I didn't get a chance to last time. We have an awesome investigator named Edythe. She is an older lady. She has a huge heart and loves Jesus Christ. She has been a member of the Apostolic Pentecostal Church. She loves meeting with the missionaries and has really come to love this Church. She has a baptismal date for June 29th. She came to the Church for the first time yesterday and absolutely loved it. On Saturday we taught her the Word of Wisdom and she committed right on the spot to stop coffee and she has been off it since that lesson. She has great faith.
We have a couple other investigators but the other one that I want to talk about today is named Kenneth. Kenneth is a nice guy. When we first met him he had a ton of questions for us that didn't really pertain much to the Gospel. Such as aliens, mermaids, GPS tracking, and poisonous atmosphere. Haha. He is a real skeptic, but I was in his shoes not too long ago. Kenneth and I could really relate. Luckily we were always able to bring the conversation back to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The biggest stumbling block for him is he doesn't know if Jesus Christ really existed or what his purpose was. Every time we would bring up Jesus Christ you could tell that it unsettled him a little. We gave him a Book of Mormon and explained that if he knew this book was true, he knew Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and he knew that Joseph Smith was a prophet and this Church is true. He seemed to understand this idea pretty well. The next week we stopped by and followed up and he had a load of more questions for us. However, this time it was different. His whole countenance had changed. You could tell that his faith, even though it was a small amount, in Jesus Christ was beginning to grow. And it was changing him. The questions he asked no longer were wild, but they were sincere and heartfelt. He really wanted to know if The Book of Mormon is true. It was a completely different person we were teaching. No longer when we brought up Jesus Christ did it cause him to fidget in his seat, but it made his eyes brighten and he just wanted to learn more and more. It was a great experience.
Elder Mcmahan and I are getting along great. We are becoming really good friends. We had a pretty crazy experience this week. We were almost caught in a tornado! All my life I have wanted to see a tornado. Not in a city where there are people, but in like a field where there are just cows. Haha. During a lesson the tornado sirens went off and it was just crazy! The wind was howling and the rain was flying. Luckily.... No tornado ever touched down, but it was close! I felt like I was in the movie Twister. Haha.
I love this new area. The members are great and the people are kind. Very religious, and don't really want to hear much about what we have to offer, BUT they are nice about it. Haha. I know God will provide us with new people to teach.
Well I got to get going. I love you all so much. Hope to hear from some of you this week.
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| Fireflies I caught in a jar...took awhile to get a good picture of them! |
-Elder Ryan Romero
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