Wow, I'm already 3 months
in. Crazy! I´m worried its going by too fast, and before I know it I´ll
have to be transferred or something. But, thats why you work hard every
day :)
So, funny story. On Saturday
night they had the daylight saving time so we were going to get an
extra hour to sleep. First of all, we were all STOKED to get another
hour of sleep. I remember asking Jess if it felt like you were just
sleep deprived for the whole 2 years and after he said yes. I didn´t
really believe it...until now. Every night I fall onto my metal springy
mattress exhausted. So anyway, we wanted to have a little party thing
so we put all of our mattressses in the ´living room´ and all 4 of us
slept out there for Saturday night and Sunday night haha. It was very fun, I´ve got some great pictures. Chocolate and sleepovers make everything better :)
I stopped a guy in the street earlier this week, just a super happy
looking fellow which isn´t that common in these streets. He had a fanny
pack (everyone here wears fanny packs haha) that had those Jamaican
colors on it and dread locks! So we were talking, he gave us his number
and I was feeling pretty good about it. Well, a couple days later I
called him and he was going off about something and at first I couldn´t
understand him. But then I heard him say (in Spanish of course) look,
will you please just call me another day? Today I am a bit crazy in the
head. Hahahaha. So its a very good possibility that he is a pot head.
But we´ll see if we can change him.
We have been meeting with a inactive man named Jose Carlos. He´s
this little short man, super nice, and has a really high voice ha. Anyway, we´ve
been working with him to try to get him to come back to church and it
was tough at first just with his job and vollunteer work, but yesterday
he finally came!! And he was telling us man it's been such a long time!
I´m starting to understand the Atonement a little better, and with that
am realizing how important it is to keep coming back to church, to keep
coming and renewing your convenants. Christ paid the ultimate price for
each one of us, you and me. One Elder shared with us a quote from
someone about the difference between Satan and Jesus, how Satan wanted
us all to have that free ticket and not have to choose right from wrong.
But he wanted the glory. And the interesting part I thought was when he
said he thought the reason being was because Satan was unwilling to
suffer. He was unwilling to pay that price for each of us. And then we
have Jesus Christ, our big bro, who was willing to do it without
murmuring at all and suffered for each and every one of God´s children.
And then on top of that gave all of the glory to God. Brother Hegamann
gave a lesson in seminary once where he had Andy Nielsen go up front and
would do 15 push ups for every student in the class to have a brownie.
There were some kids who said no when he offered them the brownie, and
Bro. Heg said ´Andy, will you do 10 pushups so that this person can have
a brownie that he/she doesn´t want?" Ugh whenever I think of that
lesson I get a knot in my throat as I remember the times when I might
have said no, I don´t want it, in life. And yet...Jesus still suffered
for you. He Loves us so much. My heart breaks every time I talk to people
here and think of the people everywhere who choose, with a gift given
to them from our God, to believe that He doesn´t exist.
Ok, I want to share a miracle we had this week. Well. Yesterday. So, Javier lives with 3 roommates--all body builders haha.
Anyway, one of them is an inactive member! His name is Silverio. He is
always super nice to us and fun, but never wants to hear anything about
the gospel. But Elder Wilson and I were walking in the street and I saw
him! We ran up to him and said hi. He looked different, very sad. He
told us his sister, who lives in Wyoming with her husband and kids, got in
a car wreck and right now she is in the SLC hospital and her son is the
the Primary Children's or something like that. I think he said that the
kid got ejected from the car as it flipped. (Have you heard or seen
anything about it in the news?) but he said he finally wants to come
back to church! We talked a little more, and then on Sunday I was waiting outside to greet people and right before I was about to
go inside becuase the first hymn had started, He pulled up! He sat by
us, crying during most of the meeting, and afterwards we were able to
have a little chat with him. It was cool to see, how in our lives we
have those mount everests that we have to climb, that just plop down
right in the middle of our path without warning. And we can choose to
either hike up it alone carrying our every growing pack by ourselves, or
we can turn to the lord and he can help take some of the weight off
your shoulders. In that sense, the choice seems pretty obvious.
This week honestly was great, Elder Wilson and I met some awesome
people and are trying really hard to get more and more investigators. Idk if I told you guys this before or not, but we´re right in the center
of a college town--Universitad de la Laguna. So as intimidating as it
is,I´ve been trying to get better at talking to kids my age and sharing
the gospel with them. We have right now...I think like 5 or so
investigators and all of them are between 20 and 25 years old. It's
awesome, one guy--se llama Julio--is a super cool Bolivian who, since
the first lesson, trusts us a lot more and more. I think that is so
crucial in this work.
...Oh no, another guy with bad BO just walked past and is sitting
by us...awww shoot. Gosh, the elevator in our piso building stunk SO
BAD of smoke, it was horrible. We all were holding our breath the whole
way down haha.
Ok, well that's good for now.
Thanks for the prayers and support, keep the letters coming! haha
Love you all,
Elder Franson
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