Ugh....Daylight Stupid Time

So I've officially decided that Daylight savings time is a dumb idea. These last couple mornings have been brutal. And we had a stake adult session of stake conference on Saturday night and we didn't get back until 9:30...So we got to bed kind of late to begin with. Ugh.

We had a great week down here in Parker. The Parker stake has split into the Parker, and Parker South stake. So that was pretty cool. Elder Zwick and Elder Hillier from the 70 came and took care of it. Such great men, they have such a deep knowledge of things. And I got to shake Elder Zwick's hand! Unfortunately, the circumstances were not totally ideal. I was talking to the bishop of the Dove Valley ward asking if we could get a ride home after the adult session ended. And so we were talking and suddenly this guy walks up to me and extends his hand. I politely turn to him, shake his hand, greet him warmly, and then as he kind of turns to my companion I start talking to the bishop again. Well, little did I know that that was Elder Zwick! Had I known it was him I probably would have said something more profound, like "do you want to trade ties with me?" (Another Elder actually did that after the conference. Elder Zwick told him no because he didn't want other missionaries to get jealous. He had a really sweet tie too.) But instead I didn't give him the respect he deserved. And felt terrible afterwards. I'm probably going to end up in some general conference talk as the "prideful missionary".

Speaking of the Adult session, it was so awesome! I always love the adult session because there is so much interaction. And such great stories. When Elder Zwick had just landed in Chile to be a mission president, his first phone call was from a missionary wearing only his companions trench coat, talking from a pay phone, because a group of terrorists had demanded him to disrobe at gunpoint, and then they lit his clothes on fire in a church building and started burning the building down. How about that for a rough start?

It was funny this week, I got kicked out of an apartment complex for the first time! I was on exchanges with Elder Cummins (been out 3 months. So the first time I've ever been out longer than one of my companions) and he talked about how in the past, missionaries had gotten kicked out before. Well, we were knocking on doors and suddenly this golf cart pulls up. He is all like "oh no, we gotta go!" and I was really curious to talk to the manger, so they came up and started chatting with us. They were really nice, just told us we had to go. So we left, and it started a chain of events that led us to another street to tract where we found a potential investigator. She gave us cookies. And was really nice and seemed to know missionaries pretty well. And on that same street, I met a Jewish person and a muslim. Talking to the muslim was funny because I was asking him about his religion (out of curiousity) and he started laughing and was all like "meh. I'm not a very good muslim". First muslim i've tracted into!. I want to baptize a muslim person so bad. You need special permission from the mission president though, because their family could come and kill them.

We did have some slightly bad news this week. The less active we are reactivating and her 10 year old daughter who we were going to baptize are moving to another ward. So we have to transfer them over to the other missionaries. It's sad, but at least it'll still happen.

Another thing that happened was we were trying to help this recent convert/new move in's 13 year old daughter come to activities. So we brought a young women and the young women's president, and they invited her and she came and loved it and wants to keep coming. It's really gone to show me that all we need to do sometimes is invite. Just a friendly invitation from someone less scary than the missionaries. It can work!

I also got to direct traffic for the adult session of conference. That was really fun! It's always been one of my life dreams. I got to hold a glowstick thing and control the traffic flow. I look forward to the time when I can do it again! But what was cool was one of the people we are teaching volunteered as well! It's always nice to see an investigator doing service for the Church. Especially one that you are trying to baptize.

This one member we are working with, we are trying to help her regain her testimony. So we were talking, and I felt impressed to talk about going to the temple. So we talked about that and she mentioned it was kind of a weird thing that she didn't want to do. A little more digging and she brought up Ecclesiates 9:5. As soon as she did that, the danger signal in my mind went off. Now, a) this lady USED to be a Jehovah's Witness. b) I do not want to bring contention into a lesson. So I was struggling to know what to do so it didn't turn into a bash, and so we could resolve her concern. We ultimately shared in Peter, where it talks about preaching to the spirits in prison, and helped her understand that different interpretations of the bible can make things confused. We left the lesson feeling somewhat frustrated as she is really not opening up. BUT we know that fellowship that helped her get baptized in her old ward who told us that "at one point she did have a testimony". So we're going to bring him, and hopefully he can respark those same feelings as before.
Well, we just got a phone call from a former investigator who wants us to teach at 3:30 today. So off we go!

Elder Gibb