Hello family! I hope you're doing well.
We've had a really hard time getting a hold of people this week, so there's not a lot to report on our lessons, but we've had a good week. We finally got to meet with Juan [edit] again. He just had 3 or 4 beers for Father's Day (holidays here don't have much to do with what we're celebrating, it's more for the fact that we are celebrating something) and came in to take a rest when we caught him home. He was about to call his priest from church for more advice on his struggling marriage with Irma. He's trying very hard to be a good father and from what I've observed, is a very good father and tries to be a great husband. It is hardly reciprocated by Irma and she is trying for a divorce, despite his efforts. We read part of the Family Proclamation with him and he was listening intently. We promised him that the Gospel would help his marriage and family more than any advice that he's getting from mutual friends and self-help books and DVDs. I hope we can meet with him more consistently.
We met with 2 new investigators last night, who Mason [edit] also invited to meet with us. He's leaving on his mission to Barcelona in August and is already a fantastic missionary! We're doubtful whether we'll get to keep teaching his two friends Kaitlyn and Patrick because Patrick is 17 (not a YSA) and Kaitlyn lives just outside the zone, but if that's the case, we'll pass them to other missionaries. They accepted baptism on the condition they find out the Book of Mormon is true. Kaitlyn's mother is a devout Catholic, so that might be a roadblock, but we'll work with that once we get to that point. Thomas couldn't meet this week due to his birthday and Father's Day activities and we won't be able to see him until after he gets back from his mission trip to Rwanda in the beginning of July. We'll make sure he takes his Book of Mormon with him to read. We're praying really hard that he doesn't trip up on his mission trip and still decides to read the Book of Mormon when he goes and comes back. Much of what they're doing down there is finding and teaching the Rwandans and helping them accept Christianity and building up some churches with them.
Other stories from the week...
I was asked again to play the organ in sacrament meeting. I'm learning songs quicker now, which is nice. I'm having fun playing the organ in different meetings. The regular organist should be back this next Sunday. Bro McAffee told me to thank Mom for making me take piano lessons. I smiled and said I would... [Editor's note: Elder LaFollette has never taken a piano lesson in his life]
What else... We tried knocking on the door of someone who hadn't been to church in years, and were trying to meet him. We were surprised when Bro Franks answered the door, the dad of an active family from Bountiful that just moved into the ward, and who we were supposed to meet with the previous night, but didn't go over (we were going to cancel, but we didn't have their phone number!) because something came up. He kindly invited us in and said they hadn't expected us tonight, but last night. We told him what happened, but didn't say we didn't mean to knock on their door right then! After getting to know them and having a good conversation, Bro Franks asked if we could share a lesson for the kids, which Elder Mason did a great job of improvising, and I went along with it. We do a lot of impromptu lessons, but this one was a lot more stressful than they usually are, but it worked out. This might be a "it's only funny if you were there" story but I thought I'd share it anyway.
Uhh.... we helped a guy move this week named Eddie. We talked to him a couple days before and he mentioned he was moving, and we persisted to offer help. Eventually he said we could come help, but didn't seem to expect us to. Saturday came, and he wasn't where he said he'd be, so we talked to other people in the complex. After a couple hours, we saw him moving stuff out of his garage with an LDS friend of his, and we went to help. It was a simple task and was no real inconvenience for us, but he was very grateful and kept telling us we didn't have to be there if we didn't want to. At the end of the move, we were standing drinking water and he asked a bunch of questions about missionaries, to us and to his friend, and said he'd look up the missionaries in the next place he was in. It still amazes me how tiny acts of service that are no problem to us can touch someone else as much as it touched him. All we did was move a small garage full of boxes to a medium U-Haul truck, but he was very grateful.
What else.... We got kicked out of an apartment complex again on Saturday night. One of the guards was suspicious of us, and when he saw us a second time (we were actually breaking no rules of the complex) he kicked us out and accused us of lying and using our "practiced excuses". It reminded me of how pathetic people are because one can usually safely assume that another person is lying to cover their bum. There is a lot of dishonesty everywhere. We pleaded our case but didn't fight back or argue, and eventually he said he would only need us to leave because there are a lot of cameras around and if another guard saw him talking to us, and then saw us knock on doors, then he would get in a lot of trouble. He said he knew we were harmless and would much rather deal with us than the gangs around the complex. Said he just needed to do his job, then kicked us out. We were still pretty irritated, but we can't blame him. So many other people are so dishonest it was probably a commonly safe thing for him to assume that other people were lying. What was funny though, was as we were about to leave, he said "by the way, my name's Gervaine. Good to meet you guys" which was pretty out of place in the conversation.
That's pretty much it for now.
Happy Birthday Camille!
I hope y'all have a great week
Love
Elder La Follette
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