Well Another week has come and gone.. This is my very last January Email. What?!?? Crazy. Lets see.. So It was another one of those weeks were it is just like what in the world is going on? I wish that half of the stuff that we plan would work out, but I like just being able to fly by the seat of my pants sometimes and go a hundred miles an hour. When we are moving fast then I don't really feel the tired, but at the end of the night it is always nice because I sleep real good!
On P day last week we went up to Kyle and played some games at the stake center, it is like maybe a half hour or 45 minutes away so I had to organize this whole thing and we skipped our comp study and yeah.. Not a good choice but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do, We showed up only 15 minutes late and guess what! Turns out we were an hour early. Da gum. Things do work out if you do what you are supposed to. I guess I shoulda done comp study, but we still had some fun, we played scatterball which is like dodgeball but everyone on everyone. I totally owned until the last two people, then I got out like three times in a row. Lame, I was a first place loser.
Betty (the Nursing home lady) totally loves us and wanted to feed us that night, so we had some donuts and pizza and yeah even had a lesson in there! She loves, loves, loves the Book of Mormon and it is so exciting to see someone have such a passion for it! Now here is the bad news. Her sister got sick and so she decided that she needed to move to be closer to her. In West Texas. Not in our area!... So she moved on... That was tough because all she did was send us a text and it was kinda like a break up. But way, way worse. Everything in missionary work translates over to dating pretty well and I always like to compare it. I was thinking about re writing Preach my Gospel and call it Find My Companion. It's a work in progress. Seriously though such a bummer to lose Betty! I really hope that she can go to some missionarys that can finish off the deal. I don't think at this point there is anything stopping her, she is probably one of the most elect people I have ever taught or seen. Hopefully I make the Celestial Kingdom cut so I can see her again.
That brings us to Megen, our 19 year old golden soccer star and future baptism. She is awesome. We met with her and shared the Plan and she ate it all up. Totally loved it all. I thought it was just super neat how well she took and applied it to her life and she talked about losing loved ones and I would ask here were they are and stuff and she could tell me. So sweet. I just love when people get what I am trying to teach to them. It makes it nice. Megen wanted to have us over and cook for us one night at Texas Lutheran University, which is cool, I like to eat so we said yes of course. We had to take a member with us and so we took this High school Senior named Ricky. It felt like a glorified hang out at the Man Cave or something. SOOO AWKWARD. I have totally lost the capabibility to communicate normally with anyone. Which is a good thing, because there was some of the one of the other soccer girls that came over and was trying to talk "Normal people" talk to us, it was awkward, somehow we transitioned it to talking about the gospel and ended up teaching her a first lesson so that was nice. Worked out good. It hit me how much I had actually given myself to the work when I had that happen. I was really grateful, if it came off like I just described a date, I really didn't go on one. It was like a buissness lunch or something...
We have a neat District Leader, he told us that he didn't want to train us to be good missionarys he wanted to train us to be good people. I am totally a stong advocate of that and so we talked about Gossiping! It was cool, I really enjoyed hearing him train, I have been really blessed to have good leaders on my mission, even if we didn't always get along with them the best, They are people too so yeah.. Anyway.
Texas got hit with an ice storm where were were, well it more just froze everything. People don't know how to function when it's cold, let alone, when there is actually some ice, so they shut the entire county down for the day, and we were told to stay inside. I wasn't about to make phone calls all day long, so we did the next best thing. Play Risk. I learned a real good lesson from that game. We didn't know how to play with just two people so instead we set up four teams and each of us played two of them. It was fun, in the beginning we both developed one team that was strong and the other was weak, Elder Van Oene decided that since his other team had to be elimanted eventually, he might as well do it now. So he slowly started to kill off his other team. I on the other hand looked like I was losing and was not doing to hot. However, I kept both of my teams and we kept on going. Eventually as the game got going into the second hour I started to take over with both of my teams and beat his team that he had left, even if both of my teams were weaker than his, they were stronger together. It's pretty true in life too. That we have to strengthen our relationships together, because if one seems to be dominating the one, it will fall eventually, Jesus taught "A house divided cannot stand". It put it into real perspective for me to actually see it work like that. Other than that game, not to much happened on friday.
Then everything that probably could go wrong did on Saturday. It was a good morning, we taught a great lesson to this member's girlfriend and she is doing well! She came to church, which was sweet, and she hopefully will get baptized here sooner or later. After we did that, we went to try and see some less actives, then Megan's lesson canceled on us and were surprised because she never cancels.. So we went back out and started to find some less actives. We drove 10 or so miles out into the country and found this really nice and fancy neighborhood with the gate unlocked. We went and saw one LA but they weren't there so we moved on to the next one. There was a kid in the front yard and I asked him If his dad was Jerry, and he said Yes. I asked him if he could go get him for us and he said Yeah. The kid was basically Spencer. Maybe just a little bit younger than he is now, but exactly how I remember Spencer. The Dad came out and he came up, he didn't look happy... So I said "Hey! My name is Elder Funk! How are you doing? Are you Jerry?" I stuck out my and he ignored it and said, "What do you want?" I responded, "Well we saw your name on the Ward Roster and wanted to share a message with you and your family." He then came back to say "Get off of my property in 30 seconds or else I will shoot you." I looked him in the eye, and said "Well, Jerry, have a great day." Turned and walked away, he in turn did the same, except he ran into the house grabbed his shotgun and cocked it and everything and checked his watch, we just walked out to the car and got in pretty casually, while the dad was in the house I even had time to tell Matthew to have a good day too. Ridiculous, he pointed it at us and followed us down the street, we still had a family to see on the street so I stopped a few houses down and we went to go see them. Elder Van Oene was kinda freaking out and didn't want to. But I figured he probably only had some Bird shot in the gun anyway... So it would be like a bb gun or something from that distance. We got in the car and drove off. Whatever, I just think how unfortunate it was that his kid had to see that. Pull a gun on us, shoot us, whatever, I really don't care to much because right now is probably the best shot I have had at the Celestial Kingdom, just don't do it in front of your kid! It makes me just want to be a better dad. (Don't worry mom. We are fine.) We went to our next house and when we got up to the door, Elder Van Oene looked over at my shirt and laughed a bit and told me I had something on the back. What would that something be? That's right, Bird poop. A Bird pooped on me. I was pretty much done for the day at that point so we went over a Recent Convert's house and watched him build a swing set and I told him about the gun and the bird poop and we played catch with his kids, and pushed them on the swing. He is sweet. We stayed for a about 45 minutes and then we got picked up for dinner by a member, He drove us way out into the country and cooked us some amazing stir fry. The only problem is that it was a three hour dinner appointment, and we really had no way out... So Saturday was A hold up, A kidnapping, and A very crappy day.
Then Megan stopped talked to us! She didn't come to church and she has ignored our text and phone calls since saturday... We are still trying to figure that one out. We are on sorta that bad luck wave for right now. But I think that it is pretty entertaining and probably means that we are in for some good blessings later on!
The best thing that happened this week actually came out of this week was when Megan cancelled on us. We have a 35 year old guy named Henry that has down syndrome, I don't think that he has gone out to a lesson before with missionaries or anything, but on Sunday he came up to me after my talk, because I had talked about where Preach My Gospel came from on a random tangent that I hadn't planned to say in the talk and he said. "Elder Funk, I have been studying Preach My Gospel my best that I can, and I like it alot." I just thought that was the neatest thing, that out of all the people that would be least likely to have opportunities to share, he was doing to the most he could to prepare. I told him how neat that was that he was doing that and asked him if he would like to come out with us. He said he would. So I talked to his mom and we set up to go see Megan on Saturday, of course the lesson fell through and we couldn't get ahold of Henry to tell him that it had cancelled. I didn't want to just flake out on him so we drove over to his house and knocked on his door, his mom answered and let us in, she told us Henry was just going to eat and that she would help him get ready. She then said that he had been studying all morning to prepare for the lesson. I was kinda sad that we didn't have a lesson at that point.. Henry then came out of the Kitchen and told us how excited he was for it, I had to tell him that it fell through, but when I looked over his Preach My Gospel and Scriptures were still open on the table. I said, "Well Henry, we don't have a lesson today, but why don't you teach us?" He went over to the table and taught us all about Faith and told us about the Good seed and the Bad seed. He even told us that he wanted to find a video to show at the lesson. I was so overwhelmed at how much he had given to try and do what is right, and prepare for a lesson. Truly the Savior meant what he said, "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first in the kingdom of God."
Remember who you are and what He stands for!
Elder Funk
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