Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Missionary Wednesday

It has been a few weeks since we last heard from Elder Fields, but here is excerpts from the last week;

Dear family and friends,
Here is more i missed to tell you last week. First; on election night after it was announced that Obama won, I heard celebration fireworks going off. It was interesting...

Last Thursday was my first transfer meeting. the actual meeting was only about five minutes long. That's my kind of meeting; short, sweet, and to the point. but it's never that simple. even though the actual meeting was so short, everyone spent about two hours before and after the meeting saying hello and goodbye to each other. i realize that people need time to catch up with each other and say farewell, but two hours before and after is simply to much. its waisted time that you could be spending doing more productive things....
Sam, I was planning on giving info on the people I am teaching and I will do that now. the rest of the week after the transfers meeting was the same as the last six weeks before that. I've been swimming through an endless sea of uninterested media referrals. That's almost all I've done since getting here. Referral after referral after referral. Most of them just want us to deliver our little media package and be on our way. All we are to most of these people is free stuff and once they have what they wanted, they have no more interest in us.
For the extreme few who will let us in to teach them, all we are is a free bible study session, once they figure out that it is a bit more than that they lose interest and we lose contact. It is extremely difficult to set an appointment and practically impossible to have that appointment. I have yet to even teach the second discussion!!!
Tuesday (yesterday) was one of the worst days ever. We had scheduled five appointments and only one didn't cancel on us. Sam, about some of the people we have taught we scheduled second appointments and they fell threw. One was a woman whose entire family are Jehovah's Wittinesses. Another is a man who was concerned by the fact that there were so many churches and they couldn't all be true. Those were great teaching opportunities but unfortunately, we have yet to actually have second appointment that doesn't fall threw on us. Elder C. blames the problem on lack of communication. we call everyone 20 minutes before our appointments to let them know we are coming. this gives them plenty of time to remember that "doctors appointment," "go shopping," or suddenly have a "personal or family crisis." He says if we had cell phones we could call multiple times and at the door. This way they couldn't suddenly forget that there was something that they had to do. I agree with him there.
As far as the one appointment on Tuesday that didn't cancel, She is already a member. We keep trying to go over there and teach her grand-daughter who often spends time over there, but we always run low on time and can never actually teach her anything. We asked her a while back if she had read the restoration pamphlet we gave her and she said she was half way through. Her grandmother is a convert who used to be a Jehovah's Wittiness, so that gives me some hope for this area. but after days like yesterday these hopes feel so empty...
That's it for this week. hopefully next week I will have some good news to report about investigators and not just the same old same old story that I have had thus far.

love Elder Fields.

No comments: