WHAT? I do not believe that!

3/25/2014

An interesting trial- we're asked to be 2 completely separate companionships with different investigators and schedules working in different areas with different people..who all live together in the same apartment and share 1 car. As our investigator Brenda would say, "WHAT? I do not believe that!" (she says this after everything we teach her, but has started to add "well, I do believe that, I just didn't know that" for clarification purposes). We're trying to switch off the car on a weekly basis, but we cover the whole mission and there aren't even any Cambodians in the zone that we currently live in. So it's a pretty far distance from anyone who's even the right race, and that doesn't even account for if they say thanks but no thanks in which case we have to walk another half mile to the next nearest Cambod's house. Needless to say it is not productive. We spend a lot more time walking and talking to random white people then getting to teach those we're trying to visit. Cambodians aren't big on set appointments; if you tell them you're coming back on a certain day at a certain time and does that work for them, they say, I don't know it hasn't happened yet. But you can try and stop by, and if I'm here and not otherwise occupied, then sure. This is not as big of an issue when you can just get back in the car after a dropped appointment and go try someone else. But when you planned out your whole day around walking there to talk to that person, and then find they're not home, and have to walk another several blocks to try another person who may or may not keep their appointment..this is what we call frustration in the biz. If you must know I may or may not have prayed for patience recently (go back like 4 weeks ago email if you need to be reminded that God answers such prayers) and have therefore brought this upon my companion and I in order to teach us to learn patience very quickly. The question now is, at what point do I tell my companion that I likely inadvertently caused this? If you were thinking never, that's the same train of thought I'm on right now too.

So one of the lessons we're walking to today is Brenda, a 21 year old girl who is mentally about the age of a 10 year old. She's the sweetest, cutest, funniest person. She has a lot of fears that hold her back, in particular when it comes to church attendance. We've been teaching her for almost 3 months now, and are seeing her slowly make progress and come around to the idea of attending church. The coolest unexpected thing there is that when we first started meeting with her, she would always complain about the kids at school teasing her or talking to her or bothering her in some way. She would never talk to them, but always brought up the fact that she hated going to school and having to be around these kids that aren't her friends and she just wants to stay home with her mom and brother and not deal with those other kids. As we've been teaching her about Jesus Christ, she's brought them up less and less. It's probably been 3 weeks before she's mentioned anything negative about school at all. As she's kept her commitments and drawn closer to Christ, she views everything around her with greater positivity  and love. And she isn't so affected by the actions of those around her, because she feels the light of Christ in her life, and so the opinions of those bullies at school just don't bother her anymore. What an amazing thing to see. I have no doubt the gospel will continue to bless her life as she prepares for baptism.

I've been in the WA-TAC 43 weeks, and the church is true here too!

-Sister McQuivs

Janessa is down to one companion now--the gal on the far right. And here she is with one of her previous comps, (to the right of Janessa).