It was another fantastic week!!! I must first say that I ate at a Mexican food restaurant for the first time on my mission. (see picture below) Yea it was really good too I got a pork carnitas burrito. Holy schnikes I needed that! Barbados has been great I have never felt closer to home then here.
We had some fun at the beginning of the week finding in the richest neighborhoods we could find. Now I know where all the white people are coming from... We had a funny experience meeting this guy that was like Jack Black off school of rock. When we met him he came out and talked to us in his underwear and it was very brief. No pun intended. He set up a time for us to come back and when we did he of course was in his underwear again and he had just woken up. We talked for like one minute and then he was like "Well I'm gonna get back to breakfast guys.." He gave us each a pound and went back in.. I was like what the heck! Breakfast at 1:30 in the afternoon! This guy is living it up. haha. Best re-enactment of Dewey Finn I've ever seen. Why did I picture that going any better in my head?
We had another odd but cool experience with another lady. I called into the house and right when she saw us she was like "NOO!" "NO!" "NO!" I said "Ok" and as she was walking away my comp was said "Can we just introduce ourselves?" Then she said "Alright you are very persuasive come in!" I couldn't believe my ears. She changed her mind in a split second and we went in and had a great lesson. The Lord is definitely opening the hearts of the people. Before I came here I was told I wouldn't be able to get into much houses to teach, but that the people are rude and make you teach from outside their gate. That has not happened to me once.
Our biggest success was with two of our investigators Junior and Shamar. They both came to YSA on Saturday and we played the most intense game of futbol ever. They both fit in perfectly with the youth in the branch they are all into the same stuff. This caused Shamar to come to church for the first time yesterday. His little brother Nicholas is the one that just got baptized recently. He has never been interested in religion so I didn't know how he would feel about church. We had been trying to get him to come for a long time but he always made excuses. But to everyone's surprise he loved all the classes he got way into it and asked a lot of questions. It's funny because everything is new to him even just the basics about Jesus Christ. He had like 10 epiphanies at church. He said that he wished that it was another hour longer because the discussions were so interesting. He accepted a baptismal date to work towards in April.
Junior is doing so well that we moved his baptismal date up to this Saturday. It's really cool because he lived a pretty rough life but has completely changed and wholeheartedly accepts the gospel.
This man Cary we met last week made for an interesting week. The way we met him was some people at his work showed him some tape where these guys totally attack the Bible and say that it was made up by white people and all this craziness. It really shook his faith. He is not a Jehovah's Witness but is kind of on the path to becoming one. As he was riding his bike home from work he saw us teaching someone so he stopped to ask us some questions. When he walked up to us he couldn't even say what he wanted to say. It was like he was so surprised or embarrassed that he actually got off his bike and was now talking to us. He explained the whole story and had a million questions. He was pretty frantic because everything he believed had just been shattered so it wasn't the best time to answer all his eccentric questions. We went back to teach him yesterday and it couldn't of gone better. We started by teaching him the reason there is so much confusion is because of the great apostasy. We went in depth of all the religious history that happened from 0 to 1800 AD. We taught him about the Restoration and then answered many many questions. With a Jehovah's Witness background we had to teach about the Garden of Eden, God's omniscience, the spirit of man, and the 144,000 to name a few.. Seriously... He put up a good fight but by the end he could see the truth of what we were saying. His statements changed from "I can't see why a loving God would set Adam up to fail and come to this evil world.." Obviously because Witnesses believe it was not part of God's plan for Adam to fall. By the end he finally got it and said "So God set this plan up so this life would play out and we could gain experience." That's pretty much the nutshell version of what happened but I think his brain almost exploded with all the scriptures and doctrine that he learned. We completely burned him out of questions. He said he feels like he learned something he's not supposed to know. haha. I am thankful for these doctrines that truly reveal the brilliance of God.
Well love you all. Life is good!
Love,
Elder Hale
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