Law of Moses

Statistically, 80% of referrals for the missionaries come from the same 4-6 members in each ward. Take a moment to think about that. Interesting, eh?

We went to dinner at the Watkins on Monday. It was nice but since the new rules were in place things got awkward. Apparently even if there are 20 people there, if there isn't a MALE adult then we can't go in. But they really wanted us to eat with them so they made us eat outside. Really awkward. We couldn't go in so they brought our plates with food out. I felt soooo horrible as she was pretty much our waiter. Weirdly enough, since we were outside, it was technically okay for us to eat outside with all the kids (ages 6-12, about 8 of them) while the adults and sister missionaries were inside. Rules....

Wednesday morning I get a text from Bishop asking me to give a Plan Of Salvation talk at a funeral for a lady I've never met who used to live in the ward. Awkward. Thursday evening I gave the talk. It was a smaller crowd. It seemed to go alright. I'm still really nervous at a podium but I feel like I'm getting better! Maybe by the end of my mission I'll be able to give a decent talk at a podium ha!

Annoyingly, a new rule is also in the process of being set up. It hasn't been officially announced yet. The rule is that elders and sisters can't have dinner appointments at a members house together. The pro to the new rule is that it would help minimize unprofessional relationships between the sisters and elders which may have increased with the ages now being closer together (or maybe statistically increased because there are more missionaries?). The major cons I see is that we lose even more unity as a district which has proven to be effective to be a united district, the ward feels more burdened if they want to keep up with providing such a great frequency of dinner appointments for the missionaries and the elders get the short straw as most dinner appointments are scheduled for the sisters with the elders as an afterthought.

Now I'm one of the missionaries who doesn't really like the way that dinner appointments have turned into. I think it's weird that the wards feel the necessity to feed the "starving" missionaries. With less dinner appointments the only side effects are that I will run out of money every month if I plan on eating healthy and I have no opportunity to build relationships with members to invite them to do missionary work. I got along plenty fine in Buffalo with very few dinner appointments but had very little relationship with the ward members in my area. So I guess we'll see how the effects of these new string of conservative rules come.

On the bright side, we can now have a P-day as a district, once a month. As long as we are being babysat by a senior couple. Except we don't have any senior couples nearby. Cool.

Mike got baptized on Saturday. He's an interesting guy. Very willing to come and stuff. He'll need the ward to really support him. He's Sister Tran and Flores' 3rd baptism this transfer with 2 more scheduled for next Saturday. They are on fire. The baptism service was really awkward and kind of kept crashing down. But they made it and he is baptized! Which is what counts.

Denzel, our Black investigator, actually is showing promises. It didn't seem that way at first. He keeps coming to church. We've been able to teach him. He's willing to be baptized. We just need to make sure he is ready and knows all the stuff. He has a lot of things to work on before hand though.

Our recent convert of about a year is very obsessive about the gospel. Which is good... But keeps us on our toes. Recently the issue has been that he is all worried about the young single adult activities. He didn't think Apples to Apples was appropriate because there was "judging" involved. He takes a certain kind of patient to get the doctrine corrected with him.