In-Field Week 12 - Stay Over There, No Soliciting

You know you're doing something right when you get yelled at for doing that thing. Welcome back to the weekly, the only thing at this point that won't give you Coronavirus (probably).

Lunes was wack. Usually, I talk only about what happened after p-day ended but it was really wack. So first, missionaries get a certain amount of money for two weeks of food. We usually split this pretty evenly and buy the things we need every Monday. However, we were told by our mission president to spend it all today. He advised us to buy a two week supply of food in the event that people are quarantined. Okay, so we did.
Then we were told NOT to go to the church to hang out with other missionaries. So we stayed in our apartment for the day.
After p-day ended, we went to go fulfill a Book of Mormon request but the guy who answered (he was the guy that requested it) said, "venga manaña" which basically means "come tomorrow".
After that, we met with these inactive members that finally returned from a trip to Mexico. And to finish out the night, we taught Clemente and he really likes the gospel. He just can't read (I don't know if I mentioned this before) so it's a bit of a struggle to leave him with commitments because most of ours revolve around reading the Book of Mormon. So we're currently looking into alternatives that don't involve a smartphone.

Martes we started to clean house. And by house, I mean Area Book. We wiped about twenty records with a "not interested". It was pretty great to clean it out, not so great that the people had lost interest or a desire to learn more about the gospel. Oh well, that dang agency once again.
Interesting contact today. We went to this investigators house but he wasn't home so we walked down a few houses and knocked it. No one answered. So we moved to the next one heading back towards our car. It's an older house but we're just like "here goes nothing." On the third knock, this guy opens the door and says hi. We say hi back and Elder Trent begins with a brief "We're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ and we have a message to share about Jesus Christ. This gets us an "uh huh". Elder Trent took it as a 'go ahead' so he starts with another sentence when this guy suddenly goes "Do you know *pause* that it is against the law to solicit in Nederland!" (Nederland is the area we happened to be in right then.) We go "Actually, it's not soliciting." Anyway, he was having none of it and told us he'd call the police on us. Once again, my bad habit of 'bet' almost got me there so we left it at that. I love it when people try to twist the law in their favor. Such fun.
Then we had a Zoom call with the entire mission where president updated us on Hermana Pindar. She passed away from natural causes but the exact cause is still unknown. And we found out about a Sister who got in a four-wheeling accident here and is now paralyzed from the waist down, I believe. Then we were counseled to go buy MORE food. So we did. We went to Walmart, then H-E-B and ran into one of our investigators! So we got his number because we didn't have it for some reason and said we'd give him a call.
Also, a bunch of our contacts fell through today so yeah, we're doing great.

Miércoles we managed to find two new people! It was through street contacting and they were really receptive to the message. We also wiped Area Book some more.
Then, we had English class over Zoom. Since we can't meet in person, we decided to meet over Zoom and it actually worked pretty well! Admittedly, I don't like teaching the gospel over video but other things, it's fantastic. I prefer to teach in person. Weird thing coming from a tech guy.

Jueves was interesting lol. We got a message that, in essence, said "No more tracting." Tracting is knocking on random doors and seeing if people are interested in hearing our message. Okay, no more of that for now. Fair enough. So we continued with our day.
We went to fulfill this Book of Mormon request for the third time and they didn't answer the door. We were just standing on his porch and this guy who lives next door yells at us "Don't you dare come knock on this door!" as he's getting into his truck. We're like "okay" and just left it at that. He drives off and we thought that was all. But no! This guy comes back like 30 seconds later. We knocked one more time on this guy's door and walked off the porch. This guy, whose standing on his front lawn now, yells again as we're walking to the car. The conversation goes something like this:
"Don't you dare come over here!"
"Sorry, what?"
"Don't you come over here. Do you have any idea what you are doing knocking on people's doors at a time like this?" (It's barely noon.)
"We are just spreading the word of God and inviting people to come to Jesus Christ."
Right here, I must have made the slightest movement toward his yard because he yelled You stay right there in the street! Don't you dare come over here."
I wanted to say 'bet' and waltz on over to him but the Spirit, in essence, told me "Don't do it. Just get in the car." So I did exactly that. Elder Trent told me as we were driving away that he was just paranoid about us having Coronavirus. Even still, that was not a good contact for me. 0/10, would not do again.
We also came to find out that the "No tracting" message was basically a message of "no leaving your apartments". Oops.

Viernes we actually got locked in our apartments until further notice. Oof. That's about it.

Sábado, locked in our apartments some more, we had a mission wide zoom call. In this, we were counselled about many things, and then told to go buy more food once again. So we went.

Domingo we had a small sacrament meeting with other missionaries! Then we sat in our apartment all day. I mean, we still worked as much as you can when quarantined, but that's about all there is to do.

So yeah, this week has an interesting one indeed. I'll tell you all more in another email.

--
Elder Thacker