Washington, Serving in the Rain: Training in the Absence of Rain

Well this week has been pretty eventful, I will tell those stories in a second. The weird thing about this week is it hasn't rained at all until just yesterday, so its been pretty warm. We have super green trees with really brown grass because there is no rain right now.

So the beginning of the week we got in my area and have been just really going through the motions, if you don't know then just ask Dad, I guess. We have been doing a lot of contacting. We don't do tracting because it is really unproductive. Instead we do this thing called Street finding where we just talk to people who are outside there house and relaxing. Apparently the odds of finding investigators that way are a lot more than tracting. Maybe that's true, because we haven't found anybody yet who wants to hear the gospel. Most people reject in a nice manner, but other times we are sworn at or called things. For example just the other day we were riding our bikes on the bike trail and car drove past calling us "LOSERS". Oh well, people don't know what they are missing.

The Eventful parts of this week:

On Saturday in the morning we went over to an elderly couple to visit them. The Grandpa had just gone through stomach surgery and he had just gotten out of the hospital. They started telling us that they were kicking out their 47-year-old son, because of how he was being disrespectful towards them and some other things. Here is where it gets interesting. I kept looking at the time thinking we need to leave soon if we are going to go give service to a non-member. That's when I had the feeling to start praying. I had no idea why until a bit later. Elder Clauson also had a similar feeling to stay in that house. We decided to start reading the scriptures with the elderly couple. Soon after their son started coming in and out of the house moving his stuff to his car. A few verses in the scriptures later, the Grandpa asked his son to put the shotgun on his bed. The son did not react well to being told what to do so he started yelling at his Dad, saying stuff like "don't even think about telling me what to do when you know you're just doing it to make me mad." That's when the Dad stood up and walked over to the son. The son was yelling at him to stay outta his face. Once the Dad got over to his son, the son grabbed him and shoved him too the ground. Elder Clauson and I, stood up as quick as a bullet to help up the Dad. However, Elder Clauson saw that the son was about to jump on top of his Dad. Seeing this Elder Clauson intervened and went into offensive lineman on the son holding him back, and eventually calming him down enough that he just stormed outside. Right when I finished helping the Dad up I started praying again. At this point the Dad decided to call the cops and put a restraining order on his son. The miracle is that the Dads stomach didn't rip open during all of this. The police arrived and Elder Clauson and I had to give a witness statement to the police officers. Pretty crazy right!

Then we went and did service.

The next event was Sunday. During sacrament meeting we were trying to help a Chinese lady, get in contact with the Chinese speaking Elders and maybe get a Chinese Book of Mormon. She could barely speak any English and so I am pretty sure that the spirit was helping me understand what she was trying to say while Elder Clauson was on the phone trying to get a hold of the Chinese speaking Elders. It was pretty fun actually trying to understand her. Which increased my want to speak a different language.

Later in the day we were to visit the Johnson's (I am only giving their last name because there are many people in the world with the last name of Johnson) at 4:00. Now the whole week Elder Clauson had been telling me that Bro. Johnson was a cross-dresser and to not stare at him while we are teaching him the lesson. I am getting totally prepared for this and we go in and we are greeted at the door by a man in a long blonde haired wig, with a dress on, and some women leg pants. He told us a lot about this change in his life. He told us that he was in the navy at this time. At this point I am trying to be polite and not stare at him rudely. Suddenly he just gets out of his chair and takes the wig off. He said that could not handle the heat anymore. I just looked at him like what the crap is going on? That's when they told me that the whole thing was a complete joke. I just point my head into my hand as everyone started laughing at me because I had been fooled.

Well that's pretty much all of the interesting things that happened this week. I hope that the coming weeks will be just as interesting. Remember everyone, choose the right, and come unto Christ.

Elder R.K. Northrup

P.S. We are having a baptism this coming Saturday, for a 15-year-old kid named Ethan Larez. He is awesome and has a great testimony of this true church.