SDSU YSA: Of Course We Remembered!

Of course we remembered! We would have never heard the end of it if we walked into the Marine Corps Recruiting depot (where the future marines do boot camp) late to church.  It was pretty funny this week though while we were there.  Basically, these boys have to be the most disciplined men in the world so they have to go through some of the hardest training in the World.  So We were walking down one of the hallways and we see this platoon of men and they are all standing against the wall. They are trained to not make eye contact with any of their superiors unless specifically told to do so.  Also they have to greet any visitors they see with a loud marine "Good Morning Gentlemen!"  so we were walking down this hallway and all of these men were yelling Good Morning to us as we passed them. It was a really unique experience! But yeah, if we had forgotten to set our clocks forward and walked into the palace of discipline it would have made for a humiliating morning! haha

     

Elder and Sister Holley are the best! I miss them SO much! They were some of the office missionaries and were just the most awesome neighbors ever! They actually just live in American Fork so I plan on seeing them again.  Elder Holley was the Fleet Coordinator for all the cars in the mission and was famous for some of his catch phrases such as, "DON'T DO THAT!!!" when talking about trying to squeeze between a car and the curb when turning right or putting bags/boxes on the car.  I had them sign my "signing journal" (the closest thing we get to a yearbook, where we dedicate a journal to have people to sign and put pictures in) and everything! They are just great!

     

This past week started out really slow.  We had only taught 2 people in 2 days but luckily Wednesday we had probably the craziest lesson of my mission. For weeks now we had been hearing about this John kid that had been hanging out at the institute.  He even went to the classes.  But for whatever reason we had never been able to catch him at a good time to teach him and add him as an investigator.  So we go there to have a lesson with Mitch and we found John there playing ping pong with him, so we snatched the 2 of them and took them to our office to have a lesson when John just starts laying into us with a ton of anti-mormon questions.  We found out that he had been going to this "mega church" down the road from his house which is famous for it's anti-mormon teachings.  Normally in this situation things usually get a little crazy and contentious but for some reason we both were just calmly answering his questions and trying to explain to him that if he would let us speak we would be able to answer all of his questions. This continued for a while until he asked the question, "Do you believe that I am saved? I mean, I do. But do you think that?"  and our hearts sank because that same question is asked to some missionaries in one of the training videos we have and the investigator gets upset that he was told that he has to live the commandments and be baptized by proper authority as well as have faith to be saved.  They answered his question but they didn't handle the situation very well so it was just one of those awkward moments. So we hear him ask this and are afraid that it will end up the same way.  But we began to simply bear testimony of the the Restoration and that through the proper Authority we can be follow the example of Jesus Christ and be Baptized.  It was amazing because after we finished explaining it was quiet for a moment.  Finally he broke the silence and asked, "How do I get baptized?" It was silent again and the Spirit was stronger than anything I have felt before.  He spoke up again and said, "I believe it is true. All of it. Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon, all of it." He began to smile. We asked him how he felt and he said he felt good and we explained to him that it was the Spirit because what he had just said was true.  We set him with a Baptismal date in April and he was super excited. after we left we saw Mitch later that day and he told us that John wanted to be baptized sooner! haha It was one of those moments I will never forget.  And as an update he came to church with us on Sunday. 

     

Speaking of Sunday, we had another CRAZY miracle! It all starts on Saturday night.  That day for whatever reason it was give Elder Reece and Elder Rowbury referrals day or something because we got about 5 of them from different sets of missionaries and they were all super willing to learn.  So we called the last of them that night. Her name was Rocky. I was driving so Elder Reece was on the phone and the conversation that I could hear was weird because it sounded like he was having to really be careful and gentle to help her understand that we were nice people and that we wanted to help her. It took 15 minutes to be able to get her to give us her address so we could visit her. She was really suspicious that we were two young guys who claimed we were from a church and wanted to meet with her at her home which, when I thought about it, is a little bit crazy that we ask people to let us into their home just from that information.  But eventually we were able to assure her that everything would be ok and that we would be sure to bring a girl from the ward with us who had served a mission as well.  We also needed a man to come with us because we can't be in homes with just girls in it unless we have an adult man with us so we invited her brother who had just gotten his mission call.  Well, turns out that the members also had an RM friend from out of town who wanted to come as well! So here we are, just this army of people coming to teach this poor girl who was already a little skeptical of having us come by.  But It was really cool because she was totally fine with it! It ended up working great because the 2 RMs did a lot of the question answering and friend-shipping and we were able to basically just sit back and teach.  She loved it! At the end of it our members asked if she wanted to come to church which started in 30 minutes and she accepted so they all changed into church clothes and came to church right after our lesson. THEN they invited her to dinner that night because they had signed up to feed us that day as well! and guess what. She accepted! As a side note, they had asked me what food I had been missing on my mission because their parents love to cook and I told them a good Sunday Roast... and they did it!!!! It fell apart and everything! haha and while at dinner we taught another lesson and she loved it and had a great time! In total she spent 9 hours kickin it keeping the Sabbath day holy with this group of Mormons she had never met before in her life.  Later that night she texted us and told us how grateful she was for the time she spent with us and that she looked forward to meeting with us next week.  Member missionary work at it's finest!  It was so cool how all of her concerns about not fitting in and meeting all these new people were solved just by having someone to be her friend.

     

Anyway, this week was pretty nuts! We added a ton of new people to teach and saw some incredible success. It was a great week. :)

Love,

Elder Ethan John Rowbury

PS: I hope you enjoyed the long email. I guess I had a lot to say this week! haha