Diffusion of Responsibility

Well here we go for the week! I left my notes, I usually prepare for my email home, it may be weird but I like to know what I want to say to yall, because I only have a bit!

 

We started out with P day! I don't really remember anything that happened. I am pretty sure that we didnt really get anything done for that day except the usual. Shop email and write some letters. It was ok I guess. What was great was that night that we went back to work! So we started off with going to the Medina's house for dinner, when I checked on the Ward Roster I saw that the only person that was listed was their one year old daughter, which was weird but I thought that might be a mistake... When we showed up they greeted us super nice and we ate some sweet mexican food! It was good. Gall I really love the food down here I think that will be the biggest thing that I miss other than the people. Anyway after dinner we had a little thought and I shared with them one of my favorite scriptures in Alma 37:44 about the Liahona and guiding our lives through the words of living prophets. When I finished I asked them who they were sharing the gospel with... The husband looked over at his wife and said... Well. Her! Somehow everyone forgot to tell us that they weren't members and that they are active non members. He was excommunicated and is working his way back, he served a mission and everything then hit a rough patch, he is leading his whole family back though and they love it. They all want to get baptized together, so it may be awhile before they get baptized but it is amazing! Talk about checking the blindspots. 

 

Then when we got out it was about 7:30, we had nothing really to do but we had gotten a referral from Mormon.org, and it was in the dog gone boonies. Like 15 miles away from home. For some reason I felt like we should go and see them and so we went! When we got there, the gate was closed and the house was completely dark... Great right? Just wasted like a half hour for  nothing. Well... I look over and boom guess what? The house that is down the road about a quarter mile is beginning to erupt into flames. Trailor Fire! I learned a lesson from Mr. Jones in Pysch 1010 that talked about diffusion of responsibility that whenever you see a situation everyone atomatically think that someone else will have taken care of it especially if there are people around, so I have always made it my goal to act. Elder Van Oene was not for going over there, but heck, it was cool. so I ran over to the gate and unlocked it and walked up and there was this guy just standing there watching it all, and I asked him if we could help. (Actually I think I said "Hey, how is it going?" Yep.... Not a good way to start a conversation when someone's house is on fire.) The biggest problem with a house fire isn't the house itself, it is all the memories and herilooms that you lose. Well that is what normal people lose. Here in Texas the biggest thing is Ammo for guns. Yep so we had to wait while the gun ammo went off before we could really do anything. I saw the guy's truck up there and Finally after like 20 minutes one firefighter showed up in a car. (Seriously we were in the Boonies.) I walked over to the fire and saw a truck a few feet away from it so one guy  jumped in and myself and the fire fighter pushed the car out of the burning home. See... That would be a cool story, in reality the truck was like 15 feet away from the fire and we pushed it another 50 feet away... Soooo it was still kinda cool I guess. By then all the neighbors had come from far and wide, kinda like the shepards in from their fields and I walked over and started talking to them. Yep, Preaching at a Trailor Fire, I can go ahead and chalk that one up as another idea that does not work for finding people to teach. But it did give us a chance to talk to tons of folks in the country that had never gotten to hear from missionaries before in their lives. 

 

The rest of the week was a blur! We did teach one lesson the next day to Ron and Christine who are a little different... They want to know alot of stuff and before we knew it, Elder Van Oene was explaining the alter worship that Abraham did or something like that. I have no idea, I have never read the old testament and honestly don't forsee myself doing so in the near future... Anyway, we had a good long conversation about teaching simply and to the point after that lesson. He likes to give the investigators everything that he knows. Which is good, but maybe... Ah you get the point. 

 

I got to go to Zone Conference this week! and President talked about Repentence. Talk about the most mind  blowing doctine that there is. President has a way of taking something deep then turning it around so simply that I couldn't misunderstand. For part of the conference we broke up into groups and had three 45 minutes workshops. President came in to ours and stayed way longer than he was supposed to, which I won't complain about at all. I love learning from that man. It may be weird but whenever I talk to him or see him I feel like he is as close to what Joseph Smith was as I have ever seen anyone be. Just a funny, charismatic, loving man. He let us practice being non-confrontational when people accuse us of not being christian or something like that. By far I talked the most out of our group, pretty much everyone was shy, so President asked if someone would like to give him some tough situations and role play with him! Of course I got to do it. It was a little weird to try and bash with President, because he gave us alot of scenrios to show bad examples and it was just weird, but he taught us alot. And I feel like that is one of the things I have really been blessed to do, just be able to accept people for what they are, they all have a little bit of truth, no matter how small and help them to grow it. That's what President does with us, that's what the Lord does with us, I don't know all the truth, I have access to the Fulness of the gospel, I don't live it completely though. I have such a long way to go, but that is what the Lord does just like us as missionarys, takes the truths that we know and magnify's them to grow and to change us. It was such an amazing meeting as I had prepared before hand and heard things that were never said. 

 

We went to visit the Recent Convert Family the Wilson's who by the way.. Came to Church!!!!... They totally love m, they gave us some referrals and when went to go contact them it was a whole Bible study! It was awesome there was about 10 people and we all studied together, I wish that we did more little group things like that in the church, because it is amazing!! Their faith in Jesus Christ is so simple and they try immensly hard to folllow Him. I really believe that they have a place prepared for them in the Celestial Kingdom, One day when they allow their hearts to hear the message, from those that they love perhaps in the next life, they will accept the fulness of it.

 

Fast and Testimony meeting. We had one lady get up and talk about how she was in the temple, a solid start to a testimony, and saw "a Mexican man walk in that was exactly like Pancho Villa", (Mexcian Robin Hood) and that if she saw him outside the temple she would have thought some bad things about him and been really scared but that since it was the temple it was all good. I don't know... But I'm pretty sure that was just racism. It was neat that she learned a lesson from it, I didn't think that I would ever hear Pancho Villa talked about in a testimony but God Bless Texas!

 

Saturday was tough, we drove all over and 3 or 4 appointments fell through, everyone thinks that Saturdays are the best time to meet because they will have free time, but I think that sometimes they forget that thier wives or husbands, also relize that they will have free time so then it becomes a competition of time and we usually are the losers on that side of things. I get it, it's a different balance in the real world.. haha but anyway long way to where I was going with this, so we had to go back to knocking doors. In all honesty I love to knock doors because I love to talk to people, half of the time it usual ends up them telling me about stuff that I didn't ever need to know about themselves or their hobbies but I just love all of these people so much! So we were knocking doors around 8 o'clock and when I knocked someone said "Who is it?" I responded with my usual, "It's Elder Funk!" because nobody opens the door when you say "It's the missionarys!" But when you say Funk, people's curiousity gets the best of them, well this time the voice said, come in and I opened the door and it was a 20 year old kid named Stephen. He was a little bit different than the normal kid, he didn't have any hands and couldn't open the door. When we started to talk, he explained that he was having a hard day and I told him about a scripture that I read and wondered if I could share it with him, eventually he let us in. He told me about how his cousin had just passed away and that he was having a hard time with it and it had happened just the other day. The Spirit directed me to the Saviours teaching's on the Mount when he said "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted." I told him that I told him of God's love for him, he told us at the beginning that his friends have told him to not talk to us, but now he wanted us to come back whenever we can. As we left I said, "I love you Stephen, I really do, can I give you a hug?" He gave me a hug and we just sat there for a minute, I know how much he needed it that day, and I was so grateful that we hadn't given up that day and called it early because he needed me. God needs us all to do things, and we get to choose if we want to do them. I love it. 

 

Remember who you are and what He stands for!

Elder Paul Funk

 

P.S. I got invited to the superbowl by a family, whom I love dearly. They are awesome. I told the Ward Mission Leader that and he said that it was a great idea, he always felt bad that we didn't get to watch the super bowl.. I bet you can guess where this story is going. Yep, instead of watching the super bowl we resisted and did 3 hours of planning and area book work. Super Bowl Sacrifice, the Lord will never be more proud of you then when you do things you really don't want to do!