Not Snowing in Texas

Well... another week in the TSAM.

It sounds like things are going great at home. And believe me I am very glad that I'm not there in the snow right now. The weather here in Texas is weird. It will be hot one day and freezing cold the other day. It has been nice this last week which is good because when it gets cold and muggy then not a whole lot of people are outside that we can talk to. But it's all good...

I was excited for MC to hear how they did and it sounded like an excellent game. Thanks for sending my cleats. They brought them by but I wasn't there and they need a signature. They should be here tomorrow. I really appreciate it.

For Thanksgiving this week we are getting treated well. The Fawcett family, she is Mexican, is having us over to eat. She has already begun making food, that's how good it is going to be. And in the morning we are playing football with the Ward which will be fun. We will be safe, we have already been talked to by the District Leaders and from President of how we need to be careful and not get hurt.

This week was OK. This area is really tough to not get disappointed because at the end of the week when we see our numbers and they are low, then we have those disappointing thoughts. We don't get the opporunity to teach very much, and not a lot of people will set up return appointments with us. So we do have low numbers, but then we look back and we find a lot of potentials that we are going to follow up with and teach as a family. So it's good. But not a whole lot happened this week.

We met with Jarrod. And that didn't go very well in my opinion because of what he told us. We sat down with him and he had read everything we gave him and even read the chapter from the Book of Mormon. But he also Google'd "Mormon" so you can imagine what came up. All this anti stuff. So he had a lot of questions regarding ridiculous stuff. We answered them to the best of our abilities and just kept resorting to prayer. He believes in the Trinity very strongly, he even named his realty business X3 Realty. Which the X is for Christ or something and then the Trinity. And so when we talked of Joseph Smith seeing two people, he kind of closed down. He also told us this lesson that he was our missionary - to teach us something - and we kind of just laughed because he hasn't seen it yet how we are here to show him truth, and not traditions of man. But we really believe that if he reads sincerely from the Book of Mormon and prays about it with real intent then he will be converted.

When we were meeting with him I kept thinking of a member in our ward. They just moved here from California and she told their conversion story which happened about 5 years ago. She said that she started reading the Pearl of Great Price - first to prove it wrong - and then was converted. So I applied it to Jarrod as well. We are hopeful for him, but we will see.

We also had an amazing lesson with a lady named Jane Zemmel. She is a long time investigator of the church. Her sister is a member and she has gotten really close to a couple of people in our Ward - Brother Rigtrup to be exact (he was an ex-mission president). We had a very powerful lesson with her. The spirit guided us and we invited her to church but she had plans already with her church and she is having surgery today. We will be meeting with her in the next two weeks and she if very promising because of the fellowship that she already has.

I think the climax of our week was Sunday. We had a 100% commitment for Tacarra to come to church. Had all these people to greet her and to befriend her. Had teachers to teach the class. We were super stoked to have someone at church. And then... she didn't come... It was very disappointing and hard because we were excited to have the Ward see how serious we are. But we got over it real fast and just moved on with the work. We still don't know why she wasn't able to make it, but we will be finding out this week.I am growing to love this Ward even though we aren't teaching a lot. There are so many solid, loving people here that we are getting close to. I don't want to get transferred until we have a baptism to get the work going. I love it here even though we knock all day sometimes. The work is tough. But when we teach someone with the spirit, all those tough times disappear. Thanks for all your support and love and prayers. Keep them comin'!

Love you all!

Elder Harvey