Elder Taylor Moulton: Week 32: Shaved Baby Dolls, Dragon Tales, New Yorker in Manresa, and a Missing Muslim

Hola family!!!

This has been an exhausting week, and we barely were able to rest
today so this should be a fun one. We, as a mission, had the goal given
to us to find 8 news before Easter this week, and amazingly 86% of the
mission did it! We took it a step farther and got 16 though, which was
so crazy for an area like Manresa, a small town in the mountains! We
found Muslims, Catholics, and best of all, a New Yorker from
Venezuela! He was a little of a potty mouth(I haven't heard such
language since high school haha). But he's a great guy, and we have an
appointment with him on Thursday! The Lord has people prepared
everywhere!

We also witnessed a long list of crazy and random things on the
streets... We saw goats, bearded women, and a man carrying shaved baby
dolls..., I wish I had a picture but you could probably imagine how
strange that was haha. Sadly, one of our investigators named Jawwed
flat out disappeared, cell phone doesn't exist and his piso’s for sale,
so we hope he didn't get deported to Morraco or something haha.

I also added to things I've achieved in life this week to defeat a
fire breathing dragon(flirtatious woman over 30). And by dragon I mean
this reactived member from lleida where Elder Woodmansee was serving
named Liah, who since visiting the Rama last week(she brought a
friend), has been calling and texting us to see Elder Woodmansee
again(she's like 45 too..., divorced, and obviously she mixed up some
feelings while he was teaching her). She even went far enough to bring
some investigators who didn't even live in our area with her to
Manresa on Saturday, and to make an FHE to see him. So after getting
help from president, we told her we couldn't meet with her, about
which she was quite sad about. On Saturday though, we were contacting
through the streets on the way to an appointment when guess who we
found? Liah and her gang! We would have ran but Elder Woodmansee’s
knee’s not doing so well so yea, we made sure that she knew about the
rules and all that stuff and why she can't be visiting Manresa to visit
him. But now we're free from that, and boom we defeated a dragon -
sweet!

While miraculously being able to find a bunch of new people to teach
was pretty great, there were also some other smaller miracles or
tender mercies like Hermana Dayton talked about. The one that comes to
mind happened on Friday, when one of our appointments fired (cancelled). At that
moment, Angel, a less active who we haven't visited in a while because
he wouldn't follow up on any of the commitments or reading that we
were giving him, but who the members have been passing by for a while,
called to have us pass by. We had planned to come by and give him a
lesson to help him get reenergized in the church, but upon arriving
we found him utterly despondent, lonely and many other things. When we
asked what was wrong, we found out that his family had been ignoring
him, and that he would be better off dead then being there because he
thought that no one loved him. Through his sobs, we testified to him
that the only way for him to find his purpose and to feel more love in
his life was to do exactly what we've always invited him to do, read
the Book of Mormon, pray for help from a loving Heavenly Father, and
to come to church to feel the love of the members there. Sadly he
didn't come to church, but I know that without a doubt, that when we
do the simple things, reading, praying and attending sacrament
meeting, our lives will be better. I also know that there was no way
that our schedule opened up at that exact time by accident, and
because of that I'm grateful that we were able to comfort that man in
his time of need.

For zone conference this week, the topic was about finding people to
teach(aka the thing we spend 3/4 of our day doing). President Dayton
talked all about how this really is a work of love, about how if we
just go into the day with faith that we will talk to a fellow son or
daughter of God that's been prepared for our message, we’ll find them!
He also talked about not being "labelers", and talking to all the
people, regardless of race/age/or angry expression that they have
when we see them. He referenced the scripture 1 Samuel 16:7, which
tells us to look upon the heart of the person, and not just what they
appear to be on the outside. So while it's a breath of fresh air to
contact a super friendly Nigerian man, we are here to talk with all
people, even the old Spanish man waving a finger/hand or grumpily
grunting "No!" before we even say anything. And crazy enough, after
finding the ridiculous amount of news that we found this week, and
some were pretty unlikely, I know that the people that are ready to
accept us aren’t always the most obvious! So don't judge people! Be kind
and loving to everyone in school/work/Zumba class/at the DMV, and
you'll find some pretty cool people in the world!

Overall a great week, and I'm pumped to meet with some of these new
investigators this week, and to help Ninfa be baptized!!!(she wants to
be clean to be baptized, sweet!)

Love and miss you all!

Elder Taylor Moulton