On Tuesday this week we had zone training. It was kind of a crazy day because transfers were the next day. But it worked out. For the admin that we shared with the zone we did something a little different. We had an Easter egg hunt. We put all the admin we needed to share into eggs and of course candy in some eggs and everyone went scavenging around the church trying to find them. We thought we were pretty clever. I was able to train on Patience during zone training, specifically patience in missionary work. I used an equation. Faith+Hope=Patience. When you grow you faith and hope you put more trust in God which will allow you to become more patient with His timing. I also used an analogy of a grilled cheese. I first wanted to cook one and show everyone that if you put the heat on high and are impatient you will burn the grilled cheese. But if you put it on medium (the Lord's timing) then you will make the perfect grilled cheese. Sadly, we couldn't find a griddle in time so I only got to talk about it. It was a great zone training though.
Wednesday we had transfers. The weather was suppose to be super crazy here in Alabama. They were expecting super dangerous tornados all across the state. God must have known that our entire mission was basically being transferred because there were only a few thunderstorms and then it turned into 80 degree weather. I always love going to transfers. You always get to see your friends! I said good bye to Elder Honn, and got Elder Lewis. Elder Lewis is a Jamaican. He says "literally" after every other word. It is pretty funny. That night we did some zone planning with the STL's Chavez and Scoleri. We came up with a theme for this transfer. "April Showers Bring May FLowers." Yes, Sister Chavez came up with that one. I wanted Star Wars, lol. But it is a really great theme. Our end goal is for everyone in our zone to baptize this transfer. We announced the theme on a conference call and the next few days we kept getting texts about how people are setting baptismal dates for this transfer. Hopefully we can all baptize!
Friday we had a strange day. We got stuck moving this less active family for 3 1/2 hours. We said we could only stay for an hour, but they ignored that. We drove to the house they were moving into and then they drove us to their trailer 30 minutes away to help move some heavy stuff. The trailer was disgusting. They put of 9 bug bombs. There was not a single area of the house that didn't have dead roaches all over the floor. I almost threw up. And then we tried to move a fridge in the most redneck way possible that almost killed me. They decided to back up the hand made trailer to the front porch and just try to lift it onto the trailer from the porch. I was alone on one side with a couple hundred pound fridge lifting it onto the trailer. All the sudden the trailer unhitches from the truck and I plummet 3 feet with a fridge. What a blessing it is that I can squat like a champ because if not I would have been smashed. I think I am going to have back problems when I am older because of all the redneck moving that I have done. Later that night was even more interesting. The STL's needed us to come give a less active a blessing. So we go over there with them and we talk for a second with the guy. He is a little crazy, but aren't we all? He asks me to give the blessing so Elder Lewis Annoints and then I start to give the blessing. In the middle of the blessing someone starts banging on the window and yelling. I sit quiet waiting for it to pass for a minute and they don't stop. I finish the blessing. Obviously the Spirit wasn't there, but what a good experience. The Sisters were super apologetic afterwards. Nothing they did. Instead of a spiritual moment, we got a "funny" blessing experience to write in our journals instead.
Saturday we had an awesome missionary miracle. We were driving to a part member families house when we passed a park. Elder Lewis said, hey we should go over there. We decided to try to see the part member family first. They ended up not being home so we went over to the park. We got there and saw a family. There was a mom and three boys. Unfortunately they started walking away. Elder Lewis was worried that they would think that we were stalking them if we followed them, so to make it not look as weird we knocked on some doors.(: While we were in the middle of a conversation with a man at his door they walked back to the park. We finished what we were doing at the door and went over and talked to the lady. Her name is April. We started talking about the Restoration and all things that encompassed that. We asked her when a good time would be to come back. She was a little wish washy and so I promised her that if she listened to this message that she would find peace in her life. Right then she started crying. She said that she knew that we were sent to her at this time and that she would like to meet with us again. It is so fun to be on the Lord's time. He truly does guide us to those people who are in need to hearing the Gospel. Sometimes we just have to be patiently knocking on doors until they get back to the park.
I am excited for this upcoming week. I can feel that we are going to find a bunch of new people to teach. It is going to be bomb.(:
Love and miss y'all,
Elder Jax Matthews
