Week Eleven

Yo what's good homies?! I hope you have all had a great week, and are looking forward to another great week.

This last p day we went to our investigators house for a BBQ but he had company so we set it up for Tuesday. Then we were driving down the road and I had the instant prompting to visit a sister’s house. She is like the chillest lady ever. She's the one who gave me the scentsy candle thing too. She’s been coming to church a lot lately and it's been good to get to know her. She loves making us food and treats and stuff.

We also bought some good hats for our Halloween activity. We both got cowboy hats, and we're gonna carve some pumpkins in them. So that will be fun. I think I'm gonna carve mine to look like a cowboy that can wear the hat. My zone started its monthly challenge, and they want the zone to do 4000 push up by the end of the week, and find a certain amount of people and what not. Well Elder Christman, my district leader, decided that he thinks our district could do that. So he's having us do a ton. Well Elder Petersen suggest we each do at least 200 a day until Saturday and that would mean we would get at least 2400 of the zones and the districts push ups. So that will be cool. So I can at least say I'm getting fit out here on the mission.

I made some cheesy rice for dinner and had it with a humongous biscuit that sister Emerson gave me. That was pretty tasty. Btw it's great just getting to know the community out here in Rockland. I see people I’ve met everywhere and everyone is nice to us. That's one awesome part about being a missionary. People either hate you or love you. So I've tried to always make people love me. Also I'm still working on loving others, it's a work in progress, but I think I'll be pretty good at it by the time I'm a year out!

A cool story this week would have to be while we were out street contacting in Rockland. We were talking to a few people and walking down towards the dock. Then we finished talking with them, and I decided we should turn around and head to the other park in our area. Well, we began heading over towards this other park area, and there were a few joggers, but those dang ear buds are the best excuse to pretend like you can't hear people calling out to you! So they ran on by. :)  Then we got to the park and there were a few people in the middle of the field taking professional pictures of their pets. We decided it was time to do the awkward contact of the week. :)  We made the trek through the field and they watched us walk up to them the entire way. I could feel the tension building as we got closer to them. It was like a scene from a movie. Like you could have put intense music building up to this contact lol. Well, when we got up to them and asked about their dogs and stuff. Well, we were talking to the camera lady, and she got all angry and told us she doesn't want to talk while taking pictures. The couple who had their dogs being photographed kinda awkwardly stood there and we told them to have a good day. So we made our slow trek out of the field and began walking up the road. Elder Petersen decided to check out the boat I took the Titanic pics on for about 5 minutes. Then we began heading up the road, and we noticed a lady walking down a side street pretty far from us. Well we decided to naturally stop and look at everything we came across to stall and not be obvious that we were waiting for her to catch up. When she finally got to us we stopped her and used the Word of Wisdom as a finding approach. And it worked. She told us that she had been walking to break her urge from smoking. She said as she was walking she was praying and asking to find a good church to join. She had been to the Pentecostal church, but got scared and left when they started speaking in tongues. We told her more about our church and we have a lesson set up for Wednesday this week. She thanked us like twenty times and told us we were an immediate answer to prayers. It’s cool to see how the Lord directs you to certain places at certain times. So that's my cool story of the week.

A fun part of the week was a lesson. So our investigator K  took us down to somewhere he called his sacred place. Almost like Rod’s quiet place. So we stopped by a Subway and embarked on a self reflecting journey with our 60 year old investigator. As we were driving to the spot he was hyping it up, but also telling us all about his interesting past. I’ll tell you more about that once I get home. :)   So we pull up and it's basically a small hike. It's the first hike I've done in proselyting clothes. People were looking at us like "where do these missionaries not go? " Anyways we got there and Karl was like "prepare to have your life changed" then I turned the corner, and this giant rock was just chilling. Idk how it got there. Probably a glacier or something. But it was just chilling on a peninsula in Megunticook Lake. It was the most majestic setting I've taught a lesson yet. Anyways it was a fantastic lesson, and the spirit is just crazy strong in the outdoors.

So prepping for a baptism was really cool. It took a little bit of thinking and asking around, but we eventually were able to get an entire little program going. When the day of the baptism came it didn't even feel special, but when we went to the church to start filling the font it all changed. Idk what it is, but the sound of the water filling for someone’s baptism is magical. That hardest thing I've ever loved to do song was true. Lol. We filled it the highest it could go, and we set everything up. We had quite a few people show up for us giving such late notice of his baptism. We sent an email out three days before. There was sooooo much food too. We even donated the cupcakes that people had donated to us. It was great. Seeing C actually get baptized was so cool though. You could just tell that he was ready. I actually got to begin teaching him on his second lesson so it's been cool seeing the change the gospel has brought into his life. Yesterday when he got confirmed was awesome too. A sister brought her baby to be blessed and wanted us to participate in that, and then C got the Holy Ghost and was confirmed a member of the church. We were running all around in the beginning of Sacrament Meeting. Then when people began to share their testimonies they spoke of C and the one he bore at his baptism and how powerful it was. He spoke of how he just felt like he knew everyone and that they felt like family from the moment he walked in. Anyways pretty cool, and B his nephew is next in line. So I'll keep you updated on that.

Thanks for all the prayers.

Lake Megunticook

K's sacred place, THE ROCK.

C's baptism

The leaves are finally starting to change.

The mission is becoming a social media mission and passed out smart phones at zone conference last week.  You can friend Elder Clifford on Facebook and enjoy spiritual messages from him!

The Rockland District

Selfies of the week: