Week 49

Subject: Here’s our number. Call us sometime!

Hello everyone!!

So, we are at the institute center on this fine P-day. We had an amazing game of football this morning. Elder Olsen (who played football with Aaron Lee, and loves reading his letters. Thanks, mom!) was our quarterback and Sis Gotberg showed all the elders up. He actually throws the ball to me, and I made a few good catches today and a touchdown! Sis Gotberg then put everyone to shame by tying with Elder Olsen and the 6'7" Elder Carlisle. I kept up with them until 7, but when they hit 9 and I fell behind, I just lost the drive. I thought Elder Carlisle was going to cry at the end there, or just puke.

Well, the weather has been cloudy and colder the last week. Maybe it's warming up again...maybe? This week was up and down. Last Tuesday we met with Mo who was totally willing to pray, but insisted he start his prayer by addressing Heavenly Father as Energy, because that's his relationship to him. At the end of his prayer he said, "in the name of Energy, Amen." I told him he should say Jesus Christ's name instead, but he's pretty stubborn. We'll see. He agreed to pray and read from the Book of Mormon every day until we meet again.

The next day we had a lunch with a man who I think is Dad's age. I think I mentioned him last week. Atheist from Palestine. He likes to call us his angels and told us what he believes 'God' is this week. He explained that to find truth, you have to fight against your own soul, and if you are strong enough you can tear it away from your body and look at it. He said he's done it and has seen what is really in charge of us. He says there are legions of beings that breed our souls to feed off of us. Their relationship to us is like a herder to his cattle. It's quite a sad outlook on life. I asked him how he knew he wasn't being deceived, but he insisted he's seen it. At the end Sis Lövgren and I compared our reactions. I don't agree one bit with it, but if I had not been a missionary I would have asked a lot more questions. Sis Lövgren said she would have started an argument with him and walked out. We both agreed it didn't feel very good.

On Thursday we got 6 numbers contacting!! We were out for 3 hours in the wind and cold and by the end, my hands and feet were blocks of ice and I thought I was going to be sick from the cold. We got back to the institute and warmed up though. One of the numbers came when we contacted a guy and another man came up said, "Where are you from?" When he knew who we were he said, "Can I give you my number? I'm interested. Do you have a phone?" That got us pretty excited, of course, and helped the other guy we were talking to feel more willing to give us his number too! Little miracles!

On Saturday we had an appointment with a guy we were nervous was more interested in me than the gospel. Turns out he had no idea I was a missionary and when I asked him what he expected from meeting us said, "I'll tell you some other time." He looked just shocked the whole time. Poor guy. We tried to make it better by being nice and talking about all the great activities we have.

On a positive note, our miracle woman from 2 Sundays ago came to church and loved the Word of Wisdom! She’d even been wanting to cut back on green tea recently when she found out it has caffeine. She invited us to an organ massage (the instrument). I got confused and thought it was some kind of a mass or something. We found out later it wasn't, so it was good we didn't go. We almost did. Since the debacle on Saturday, we have been blessed with 2 new women investigators! We also found out that we will be staying here (of course), the other sisters will be leaving, and we'll be a trio with Sis Jensen. I'm really excited about making it into Indiana. I got the email, but the computer didn't have adobe to read the attachment. There was a slight moment of panic, but Sis L's had it, so I got to print out the letter and show everybody! Are you going to be leaving, Ted? That would be sad. How long will you be in St. Louis, Jeff? 2 more years? I have to hear back from USU and pray about it first, but it's cool nonetheless. Well, the pizza is starting to settle, and I should go play pool now. I'm so excited about this transfer! Spring’s coming!

Kram,

Sys Maxwell