Elder Paul Funk: Just About Grown Up Now

Well another week has already come and gone! I am getting to be SOO old. 20! That is like a fifth of the way down with my life or something! Crazy. Not really, I'm pretty sure I am going to live forever.

This week was up and down, just like all the others, even the whether seemed a bit bi polar. I think it hit about 80 or just above it and then it also hit like 30 degrees. That's so dang cold! I don't think that I was meant to endure that.. I am grateful I am not on a bike though! It would be a really a ton worse then if we were.

Well. As far as our investigator pool it seems to have kinda done another nose dive. Not really our fault, just sometimes it seems that it takes weird turns.

Megan is doing well. She just won't come to church at all! Good golly it gets me frustrated. She always goes to San Antonio for the weekend and then just never comes back around in time for church. I don't really blame her, Seguin isn't the best place in the world to hang out, although we do have the world's largest pecan. Except that it is just fake. Anyway, she is progressing pretty well, we just can't get her to come to church.

Our other investigators pretty much are still on weed. Granted I don't think that we have gotten to the point where we can teach them the word of wisdom yet, but still. Smoking weed should be common sense as a thing not to do. Whatever. It just is really, frustrating.

Micheal the guy that was going to commit suicide, is doing ok.. He just isn't coming to church. He is pretty much blind and so he can't drive to church and stuff and has to rely on other people whenever they take him somewhere. His house always smells weird too.. Weed. Seriously. Everyday we just smell like Weed.

Well Sunday came and I got to do a musical number and also a talk! That was a little bit different. I stood up and went over to play and it was pretty good. We played I need the Every hour with the choir. It was neat to be able to accompany a choir, it all went real well. Then it was weird because I had to put down my instrument and move everything and usually when I have done it in the past it was while a speaker was speaking so it wasn't like a dead silence. It was just weird. I didn't compliment myself or the choir over the pulpit either so that was totally breaking the Mormon tradition too. My talk went well, in the middle I thought of Yankee analogy that would tie in really well to setting goals and so I talked about them for a bit, it was kinda different, it wasn't something that normally I would ever say in a talk, for fear of my mom finding out, but after words we went to class and there was this Recent Convert that we haven't been able to get to open up alot yet since they moved her and boom. She loved baseball. She totally talked baseball with me and it was sooo great. She's a tiger fan, but that is what repentance is for. (*I totally support talk of the Yankees)

Last night we were studying after church and we heard a gun shot like right outside our apartment and we looked out and there wasn't screaming or anything so we kinda dismissed it and let it go or whatever. Then when we went home for the night and outside there was like 4 cop cars and a bunch of teenagers lined up outside the laundry mat. Goodness, I really don't know about Seguin. I'm pretty sure we are going to end up dying one of these days. I figure I am either going to the Celestial Kingdom or I am going to the depths of Hell. I really don't want anything in the middle. Celestial Kingdom or Bust for me.

I mentioned that I started the Book of Mormon in my last email home, Oh I love it! As much as the mission has taught me and changed me, I don't think that I learn as much as I just start to know things. I now know the things that I say are true, I don't just say them anymore. There are things that are so real to me that it is as if they are more true then things I physically see. I love it.

This morning I had a study and was reading the Isaiah chapters in the Book or Mormon and he talked about an "angel of light" and how Satan will come and try to deceive many by "transforming". It made me really think about the Angels that have come into my mission. I know there have really been so many. I see more clearly now some of the things that weren't as clear before. Who it really was that in certain situations helped me.

One of the hardest things that I have ever had to do on my mission happened the other day. We were teaching this man named Jose. We picked him up the first week that we got here. I love Jose sooo much. We worked in his garden and he wanted us to help him put an addition on his house. He has been reading the Book of Mormon and a couple of weeks ago we went over and he told us that the story of Nephi made sense to him and it was something that he had always believed. We went over the baptismal questions with him and he said he was willing to do them all. Even the Law of Tithing. He was so golden. Everything that we taught him he soaked in like a sponge. Baptism was something that he wanted sooo, so badly. We kept telling how great of an experience that it was and we set him with a date in April. He knew it was all true. The Plan made his heart just jump, he loved it all! We took our ward mission leader over with us and we had a lesson, we confirmed baptism and everything, one of the most powerful lessons I have had on my mission. We walked out and the Ward Mission Leader said "That guy talks just like a Mormon!" Yep he totally does! The next day we had correlation with the Ward mission leader, and he pulled up a page on his Ipad and showed us, Jose was on Probation for Sexual things with a child, for the next 8 years. It was a such a dagger to the heart.

So it became my job to talk to Jose about it, since we are such good friends now. I called him and called him. Finally later in the night he called, and I answered it. I told him what we had found and at first he got defensive, but then he realized that we were trying to help him and I told him the power of Repentence and that it can only work if we are ready to give up all of our sins. I told him that he was going to have to wait to be baptized. I have never heard a more crushed voice in my life. I could feel his spirit just sag. I love that man with all of my heart, and it grieves me more than anything that he can't be baptized on that date, I know how much it would help him. Baptism cannot rob Repenctence of it's fruits though. So we have to wait. We are going to meet with him today.

I have gotten to use my viola here more than my other areas. I was telling a member I played and she set us up an appointment today to go and play some music for her friend that is a non-member. There is another member that has a kid that seems to be kinda struggling right now, but is phenomenly talented at the violin so he asked me to help him do a musical number. I love these people. The Lord really wants to use us and to help us become just like Alma "An Instrument in the Hands of the Lord."