Tender Mercies

Just a note: Dan, Cameron and I had the privilege of visiting with Brother & Sister Grondel on Sunday as we were passing through Las Vegas on our way to St. George. We got some pictures of us to send to our boys the next day with our emails. I waited and waited for Logan’s email, but it never came and I was so disappointed. So I did what felt kind of naughty and hacked into his mailbox! His email to us was there, so I got to read it. But then, he hadn’t received ours at all because his box was too full, poor guy. We ended up snail-mailing his letter to him . . . along with his new password since I had to change it when I broke in.

Hey! So I took a look at the pictures! Haha! Oh man, I bet that was fun having Brig all over your face like that, Dad. And oh my goodness!! Cameron, DUDE! Holy crap are you still going to the gym consistently? You look pretty dang good, I’m not gonna lie. Those fore arms look huge dude. Well at least you’re picking up the slack for me, cause man, I’m getting out of shape… Well, being in a car area really doesn’t help that… oh well I guess that’s part of the sacrifice! ;)

I have to say though, Elder Grondel and I just experienced some tender mercies last night. So the last two weeks we’ve been tracting and tracting and… tracting. Had very few lessons. The Jensen’s cancelled on us two weeks in a row. So we finally got two new investigators, only to find out that one is like severely bi-polar and has ADHD like crazy, can’t even sit still, and she’s trying to work the system to try and get church welfare. The other one is schizophrenic and is fried from drugs no doubt. So we have been trying so hard to find people to teach with no luck. Then Sunday rolls around and we are exited because the high councilman from the stake is going to address the ward about the 20 lessons a week for the missionaries, because the members need to be involved. Well, he doesn’t address it at all, he does mention going to find the lost sheep, but that didn’t do anything for us. So once again, our ward fails to launch this plan into action. Then we get our dinner calendar back to find that no one signed up for dinner, so we’ll have to feed ourselves for a while. Then Brother Alger called, and said he couldn’t take us out to go teaching on Sunday (he usually does every Sunday from 6 till 9). So things were very frustrating to say the least. I was pretty upset at the way things were looking. So we went back to the apartment and ate lunch and tried to figure out what to do. We looked at our referrals from people watching TV or something and I called this lady that wanted a missionary visit. She wanted to cancel that and didn’t want the missionaries to come. So we decided to call this one guy Mike Glissman, who ordered a Book of Mormon from Temple Square about two weeks ago. No answer. Finally we decided to just stop by to see him and try some less actives if he fell through.

So we took the 40 minute drive up there and finally found his house. We got out of the car and this lady, Penny, started talking to us like we were good friends and introduced herself as Mike’s wife. She invited us in and got Mike and they told us all about how he works out in Salt Lake a lot and they took the Temple Square tour. (Props to sister Diaz who did the tour, cause they really liked her.) But they have an aunt that is LDS and they wanted to hear “our side of the story.” And as you can imagine, those words are always music to a missionary’s ears. So, we told them. They took the lesson well, despite our horrible preparation and deliverance. We tried committing them to baptism but it didn’t work out as well as I thought. Haha that’s okay though, they weren’t offended. But they agreed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, and even offered to feed us dinner the next time we came over for a lesson!! So we will see them in two weeks, I didn’t like that it was going to be that long, but that’s when they could do it. They intended on reading the Book of Mormon, that’s why they scheduled so far out so they could allow time for them to read and pray. Man, that was THE warmest welcome and the friendliest people I have met on my mission. It felt good, and I knew Elder Grondel and I were there for a reason. I just know it.

But we finally got out and left and we felt so good. We felt ashamed for our discouraged thoughts earlier and prayed and thanked Heavenly Father for His love and that he trusted us enough to have us teach the Glissman’s. It’s a good thing that I have a cry baby companion like me, cause it would have felt weird crying alone those first few minutes on the drive home. Cause we did. This experience gave me a renewed zeal and a new outlook on my mission. I felt so blessed to be here on my mission to talk to the Glissmans, even if they never had us back, we were there for a reason. The last two weeks were hard and they were discouraging, but we kept at it and Heavenly Father blessed us so greatly. I kept thinking about the witness that you receive after the trial of your faith. That trial was two weeks long, and now because we tried, we were blessed with Mike and Penny who I feel, were prepared for us to teach. Please include them in your prayers. Two weeks is a long time, and I hope everything will fall into place.

Other than that though, Zone conference was great as always! It was good to have Elder Grondel, and Elder Whitehead with me, since we all came out at the same time. I’m grateful to have Elder Grondel as my comp. President told me that he knew that we were supposed to be together and that good things are going to happen. Even sister Howell commented that she could see the unity on the companionship. Tell Brother and Sister Grondel thanks for raising a good kid and a great missionary!

Tell mom she’s grounded for not emailing me, that’s not like a missionary mom! ;) But seriously, hope everything is going well.

Things I need… I’m going to need those prescriptions, I can’t find them anywhere, and my allergy pills are running low… :( I would also love to get a copy of the king follet sermon by Joseph Smith. (I don’t know how to spell it). And Cameron should definitely check out Goodwill before you spend 700 dollars on suits. You can find good ones at goodwill for 10 bucks! Seriously, goodwill is a missionary’s dream store. Ties for a buck, how can it get any better?!?!?!

Love you all,
ELDER LOGAN BROOKS