Hey Family!!
The only eventful thing that happened this week was yesterday. I woke up at 4:00 a.m. to make it to the Wyview Chapel at 4:30 to catch the shuttle to the airport. We would be traveling with 5 Elders and 3 Sisters. Well the shuttle didn't show up until 5:30 so we were just sitting there for an hour. We got to the airport and went through security. I quickly found out that airport workers are very uptight. Haha especially for being early in the morning. We got through security and our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:41. When we were all done with security and such it was 7:00, so we had some time to relax. Being on an airplane for the first time was really cool. My favorite part was the takeoff because it was cool to see how fast we were going and then all of a sudden seeing everything get smaller and smaller. After a 50 minute flight, we got off and were picked up by a senior missionary by the name of Elder Greer. Elder Greer took us to an institute building so we could talk until our consulate appointment. Little did we know that our appointment was at 1 o'clock. When we got to the institute, it was 10 o'clock Vegas time. Elder Greer said,"anything I say today will not pertain to your personal salvation, but I hope you retain some of this information for your future boyfriends or girlfriends. If you want to sleep, I don't care. If you need to use the restroom, just go." Then he goes on to talk about the lineage of Abraham and all the family issues they had. It wasn't a group discussion, it was a lecture. And he talked all the way up until 12:30 and we had to leave. All of us sighed with relief. Then Elder Greer says,"when we come back we are going to talk about the different dispensations." and I turned to another Elder and said,"WHEN we come back???" and we all groaned to ourselves. The consulate itself only took a half hour. Then we got back to the institute at 2, and he told us he was going to drop us off at the airport at 4....so we got to hear another long lecture about lineages through the dispensations. 4 o'clock finally came and we all rejoiced. When we got back to the airport, we went to get our boarding passes and we found out that the church voided our round trip... so we made a call to Salt Lake and found out that they switched our flights and switched airlines. That took a half hour to find out. Our new flight was scheduled to leave at 7:00 pm. It was 4:30 at this point. So we reported to our gate and got dinner. After we had dinner, we found out that our flight was delayed until 10:20.... So my companion and I decided to go proselyte. Haha we bought a B.O.M. the day before for this purpose. So we had 5 hours to talk to people. Long story short, the only people we talked to were members, stopped talking to us as soon as we brought up religion, or just plain ignored us. This went on for 5 freaking hours. My companion and I kept walking around with hope though. When we sat down at our gate again, we decided to go around one more time. We figured one more time wouldn't hurt. We went around and......nothing. We came back with 20 more minutes until our flight and needless to say we were frustrated. We were sitting down with our heads in our hands. We had just declared we were done trying when we heard a voice say to us in a loud whisper,"psssst. Are you missionaries?" we looked up to see a young boy. We whispered back excitedly,"yeah!" and we stood up to go talk to him. (he was sitting 10 seats over from us) He was this little ball of joy. He told us his name is Latrell and he was 12 years old. I have never seen a young boy so excited about the gospel. My companion and I were talking to him and he noticed the other 6 missionaries sitting down, and he wanted them to come over too. So I got everybody else to come over to talk to him. He was so happy! He said,"I feel so......spiritual!" and it just made our day. We kept talking to him and he told us his favorite scripture is James 1:5. We shared with him our favorite scriptures and he was just so happy. My companion and I decided to give him the B.O.M. we bought and we told him,"we want you to read that, mark your favorite scriptures, write your testimony in it, and give it to someone else that needs it. That was you can be a missionary too." and his face just lit up. He was so happy to do it! He said,"I am never letting this out of my sight until I give it away!!" We were so happy! Then we sat by him on the plane and read about Samuel the Lamanite with him. Long story short, the 5 hours of frustration were erased and all we could think about was Latrell. I just remember thinking,"the Lord answers our prayers in mysterious ways." all we prayed for by the end was SOMEONE to talk to. As soon as we threw in the towel, we heard his loud whisper, and we forgot about all the rejections. You never know who's life you will change. Always be ready to share the gospel, no matter with who. I love you all, and I'll send the pictures from this week in a couple minutes.
Love,
Elder Barton
No comments:
Post a Comment