August 31, 2015
So as the title indicates, it
has been another week out here in
Washington or Warshington as you're supposed to pronounce it. It has definitely been one of the best weeks so far. To start it off, we had zone conference on Tuesday. Wow, President Taylor is one of the most inspired men i have ever met. The zone conference was on the doctrine of Christ, and he talked about repentance. There are a lot of doctrinal things and cool stories i could share, but i don't have much
time so I'll just share one principle.
He talked about the NASA program going into space. Apparently they retrieve every shuttle after it has landed back on Earth. One thing that they found is that all of the space shuttles had a burned O ring which separated two chambers that could not mix. Well this kept happening and people were working on them so that they wouldn't burn. That took up a lot of time and none of them had burned all the way through yet, so they gave up on fixing the problem. That is called the
normalization of deviance. Well in 1980 a space shuttle, the first space shuttle with an average civilian on it blew up in mid air. The reason? An O ring that had burned all the way through. The devil has created the term "normalization of deviance"
So Zone Conference was awesome, and the next day we had exchanges with the traveling APs. Our mission has four APs and two of them go around to a different part of the mission every day and go on exchanges with companionships. So that afternoon i went out with Elder Braasier and we did some street contacting. We got like three new investigators in like an hour ha it was crazy. Then we had dinner with "ma girls" haha they are three widows in the ward who are best friends and retired so they just hang out all the time. After that I went out with elder Brase. it was really cool, we taught an inactive guy and his family. At the end of the lesson, Elder Brase asked the dad (S***) to say the closing prayer. At the end of the prayer he had tears in his eyes and said he hadn't prayed in like 15 years! haha but the night didn't end there! It was like 8:15 and our appointment fell through so Elder Brase and I decided to do some late-night contacting. Well we knocked on the first door and i recognized the lady who answered. she has blue and green hair and i've seen her walking around and smoking all the time. haha well surprise, she's a member! she's been out of the church for like 20 years but she said she knew it was time for her to come back to church. She said she isn't ready to meet with the missionaries yet but she said she's making her way there and she also said that she would love to give us haircuts! YES!!! haha so i got my hair cut from het today.
My last cool story for the week happened Sunday. Saturday night my Comp. and i were praying hard for what we needed to do better as missionaries. We felt that we needed to be more proactive in establishing a missionary culture in the ward. So we fasted Sunday to be better at doing that and also for baptisms. Well it was a fifth sunday, so for the third hour we all met back in the chapel and the bishop talked for like an hour and twenty minutes about how the ward could be better at helping the missionaries! wow. Then later that night, we knocked on a part member family's house. A ten-year-old girl answered the door and said "Hi. I'm going to be baptized." Literally, those were the first words out of her mouth. The lord definitely answers prayers. I love all you guys, hope you have a great week! AlsoS/O to my sister Jane it's her birthday tomorrow!
~Elder Thomas
Washington or Warshington as you're supposed to pronounce it. It has definitely been one of the best weeks so far. To start it off, we had zone conference on Tuesday. Wow, President Taylor is one of the most inspired men i have ever met. The zone conference was on the doctrine of Christ, and he talked about repentance. There are a lot of doctrinal things and cool stories i could share, but i don't have much
time so I'll just share one principle.
He talked about the NASA program going into space. Apparently they retrieve every shuttle after it has landed back on Earth. One thing that they found is that all of the space shuttles had a burned O ring which separated two chambers that could not mix. Well this kept happening and people were working on them so that they wouldn't burn. That took up a lot of time and none of them had burned all the way through yet, so they gave up on fixing the problem. That is called the
normalization of deviance. Well in 1980 a space shuttle, the first space shuttle with an average civilian on it blew up in mid air. The reason? An O ring that had burned all the way through. The devil has created the term "normalization of deviance"
So Zone Conference was awesome, and the next day we had exchanges with the traveling APs. Our mission has four APs and two of them go around to a different part of the mission every day and go on exchanges with companionships. So that afternoon i went out with Elder Braasier and we did some street contacting. We got like three new investigators in like an hour ha it was crazy. Then we had dinner with "ma girls" haha they are three widows in the ward who are best friends and retired so they just hang out all the time. After that I went out with elder Brase. it was really cool, we taught an inactive guy and his family. At the end of the lesson, Elder Brase asked the dad (S***) to say the closing prayer. At the end of the prayer he had tears in his eyes and said he hadn't prayed in like 15 years! haha but the night didn't end there! It was like 8:15 and our appointment fell through so Elder Brase and I decided to do some late-night contacting. Well we knocked on the first door and i recognized the lady who answered. she has blue and green hair and i've seen her walking around and smoking all the time. haha well surprise, she's a member! she's been out of the church for like 20 years but she said she knew it was time for her to come back to church. She said she isn't ready to meet with the missionaries yet but she said she's making her way there and she also said that she would love to give us haircuts! YES!!! haha so i got my hair cut from het today.
My last cool story for the week happened Sunday. Saturday night my Comp. and i were praying hard for what we needed to do better as missionaries. We felt that we needed to be more proactive in establishing a missionary culture in the ward. So we fasted Sunday to be better at doing that and also for baptisms. Well it was a fifth sunday, so for the third hour we all met back in the chapel and the bishop talked for like an hour and twenty minutes about how the ward could be better at helping the missionaries! wow. Then later that night, we knocked on a part member family's house. A ten-year-old girl answered the door and said "Hi. I'm going to be baptized." Literally, those were the first words out of her mouth. The lord definitely answers prayers. I love all you guys, hope you have a great week! AlsoS/O to my sister Jane it's her birthday tomorrow!
~Elder Thomas
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