Emotional Roller Coasters! Wahooo! And 1-6 Week Training this week

So, as you can tell from the subject line, we have had quite the week!  I will get to all of those details throughout the rest of the email, but know that Elder Norris and I are doing great despite the emotional roller coaster that we've been thrown on the last couple of days.  It is just that we grow so close to our investigators and we have a real concern for them and their situations, and a real love for them as individuals, and when we see things happen, we can do all we can to try and help, but for the most part we just sit there on the sidelines and watch as they are backed up to the wall of Faith and tried with much difficulty.

Merry Christmas

But I digress - I'll tell you about my week now.  :)  On Monday, we had Preparation Day.  We went to Lambeau Field for a while, checking out the Pro's Shop (gift shop) and other things, but it was Game Day, and because of that a lot of things were super busy and crazy, so we didn't stay there for long.  Later, we went to the Green Bay Cabella's with some other Elders, checking out the hunting and fishing equipment.  I felt so lost there - I know nothing about hunting and fishing, so I just stood out like a sore thumb.  But the guns and stuff looked cool, that's for sure!  But I have no idea what makes one gun better than the next one...  :P  Or I could just buy a bow and arrow - like Hawkeye from the Avengers...  :P  Yeeeah, I'll just do that.  After that, we went to the GB1 Elders apartment and relaxed for the rest of the day.  We played UNO and talked about random stuff until P-day was over, and then we got dropped off back at home.  Right at 6:00, we went over to Lilianna's house to have a lesson that was previously scheduled, but she told us that right then was a very bad time to try to have a lesson, so we didn't ask questions, just rescheduled the lesson for a different day in the week.  Then, we went out and attempted to use the new survey approach that we've been given as missionaries.  We first tried the family that we found next week, but they were not home.  Then, we tried a few other houses, and nobody answered the door and we just couldn't figure out why!  And then we remembered - it was Packers Game Day.  So, we only got to teach 1 lesson, and it was to this elderly woman named Lois who served for 20 years in Brazil as a Catholic Missionary, helping people and being in charge of a hospital.  It was very obvious that she had dedicated her life to Christ and had lived in such a way as to please God.  It was great to be able to talk to her!  :)

On Tuesday, just like all other Tuesdays, we had our District Meeting!  I really enjoyed the meeting this week, because it didn't involve me being the one that talked the most, like it turns out being a lot of other weeks (it's hard to maintain cooperation and participation in a district of 4 guys).  The reason was because each of the other missionaries - Elder Norris, Elder Landaverry, and Elder Bernet - all had to prepare two 5-minute trainings on different points of "Our Purpose as Missionaries."  It was very good and I was super glad to be able to learn from each of them.  After the meeting, we contacted people around our house, such as a 16-year-old named Brandon and a referral whose name is Gail, and then we went over to Luis's house so that he could come with us to a lesson with a woman named Angelina, but she was not home.  Then, we went over to the Nieves family's home and taught them the last couple lessons that were required to be taught before baptism.  They are progressing nicely!  We also made plans for the baptismal service and for the interviews to take place this coming Saturday. But that ended our Tuesday!  I am just very thankful for their progression, and it is amazing to see each of the young children reading the Book of Mormon - one of them, a 10-year-old, read more than 50 pages in just a couple days!  :)  What a great testimony to me!

On Wednesday, we spent a couple hours using the survey on a street that we've never been down before, and then I realized why I'd never been down it before!  There are 3 Hispanic families on the entire street, and 1 of them is a member family!  However, we were still able to talk about Gospel topics with some of the other people as well, having 4 lessons and gaining 2 referrals by the time we left the street, so it wasn't a complete loss.  Later, we were going to have a lesson with Sister Rios and the Solorio family, but Sister Rios had gotten sick so we just taught them on our own.  Our lesson was mostly about the "He is the Gift" thing that the Church is promoting right now, and we showed them some of the Bible Videos from the internet, so that was amazing.  The Spirit was so strong!  But in order for this family to progress more, they need to hear the Gospel from their friend, Sister Rios.  That is why Members are so vital to this work!  :) 

Thursday was our usual Weekly Planning day and it was great to be able to plan on having 4 baptisms next week!  Exciting!  :D  But because that took so long, we were a little later out of the apartment than we wanted to be.  But it turns out that it didn't really matter because the bus was like 15 minutes late, so in the time that we got to the station we had already missed our transfer bus, so we spent some time waiting by going around and teaching some nearby people, and then we finally caught the bus!  We went and we taught 2 families that used to be referrals and we were able to pick both families back up!!  And later, on the bus, we met some other kids that are interested now, too!  But after all of that contacting, we went and we had a member-present lesson with Liliana, with Michelle Rios (a young woman from the Branch) who attended with us to help us teach the Plan of Salvation.  And later, we went to the Rios home to talk to Michelle's little brother, Miguel, who is 8 and has not been baptized!  But he said that he wants to be baptized now, so we're going to be helping them with that process.  To end up the night, we went to the church and we played basketball with some members and investigators!  It was pretty good!  And after we got home, some other elders spent the night with us because in the morning we all had to drive down to Oshkosh to go to a training together!

They were from Sturgeon Bay and were spending the night to save them some driving time in the morning.  But their companionship is also training, so in the morning we went to our meeting for trainers/new missionaries!  It's called 1-6 week training and it's basically just checking up on us and seeing how the training process is going!  :D  But that spent all day, and it was amazing to hear the different trainings and testimonies from President Cutler and Sister Cutler and the Assistants.  I love it!  When we got back to Green Bay, we met with a less-active man to talk about the process it will take to get him the Priesthood, and then we had a dinner appointment at some members' home, where the members friends were flirting it up hard core with the missionaries.  It was so uncomfortable, because they were 12!!  And to end the night, we played Volleyball at the church.

Now Saturday is when things get interesting.  In the morning, at around 10, we went to the Nieves family's home to make sure they remembered about their baptismal interviews at 11 at the church.  Then, Lisa told us that she didn't want to get baptized because she had concerns!  But after talking to her, she agreed to come to the church and get interviewed.  So, she got interviewed by President Krehbiel and the Zone Leaders interviewed Pedro and Hubert (Orelia was in the Upper Peninsula for the day) and after an hour, all 3 of them had passed their interviews!!!  So, we filled out the paperwork for the baptism and everything was going great!  Lisa had gotten her concerns answered and we were all happy, that is until that night, when Lisa called us in a frenzy and was really concerned.  We calmed her down, and found out that all of her family and friends was approaching her with all of these different websites and packets just full of Anti-Mormon material and it was giving her all of these doubts.  We weren't able to talk about it very much because she had to go do something and never called us back, but it was saturday night that we decided to fast and pray - HARD!

Sunday rolled around and we still hadn't heard from them.  We went to their house before church to no answer, and no answer to our phone calls or txts either.  But that afternoon after we were proselything, she txted us and told us that she was upset because she had just had a death in the family, and then later in the evening she called us to talk about the concerns that she had with the church, and let me tell you, the Anti-Material she has is SO false and full of lies!  I was the one who was on the phone with her, an she would read something to me, and I would explain why it was not true!  What most of it was is a piece of Mormon doctrine, thrown together with a bunch of lies, mixed up to make this Anti-Mormon lie smoothie, that is so close to the truth it is scary.  It was so close, but it was not quite there, and because of that reason, she was terrified.  But after talking it over, she realized that she had been misinformed!  We then agreed to go over the next day to discuss it further, so wish us luck!

But that's the update we have for now.  More likely than not, they will not be getting baptized on the 20th, but I have no doubt they'll get baptized someday.  We will do all that we can to make it happen sooner rather than later.  We love this family and are so sad that they have been misinformed, but are glad that they trust us and their feeligns to know what is true and what is not, much more than the information they get fed from friends and from the internet.  Satan tries so hard to get us to believe something that is false.  Just like a former talk in General Conference said, even if we are 1 degree off of the plotted course, in the long run, that little degree will take us forever away from where we need to be.  That is the way Satan works.  And that is why we must be strong!!! 

I am doing great, and am hoping and praying that the Lord grants us strength over the adversary as we get rid of the lies that he is spreading.  :D  Stay strong, keep the faith, and endure to the end!  That is key!  I love you all!!!  :D

--Elder Nate Hubert