How do they keep finding us?
Hey family,
This week we ran into a ton of crazies. And now we're thinking about teaching one. Ugh. Sometimes, I really think Preach My Gospel should have a section about various mental health disorders and how to diagnose them. Or at least how to get rid of them.
The best crazy guy for this week was somebody that we actually met before, but we completely forgot about him. Right up until he popped out of the crowd, got about an inch from my nose and started shouting MAODUNGMAODUNGMAODUNGMAODUNG! Having a brainfart, I asked him what he was talking about. Then he started saying something about a "new god" and other crazy stuff. Seeing the look of utter confusion in my face, he turned to Elder Wong, asked him if he knew what he was talking about. Elder Wong nodded with a smirk, and the guy wandered off satisfied. A few seconds latter I figured out he was talking about Mao ZeDong. I'm a little bit afraid to know what caused the unique nature of this guy's affliction....
And thinking of crazy, I'm pretty sure the guy next to me in the library is speaking Parseltongue to himself or something. It's a little bit disconcerting.
On the plus side, we got to go on a pretty fun ward event this week. At first we weren't really planning on it because it was an all day event, but the Bishop asked us to come so we went for it. We went on two tour buses down to this cool little fishing village/tourist trap called Tai O, and I got to eat all kinds of crazy food there. Plus, J managed to come, so it was good to see her. After that, we went to this sort of cool fort in the middle of nowhere, and then we went to this really nice park. It was a pretty fun event - we got a lot of chances to talk to less actives and part-member families that we don't really get to see that often. It was a little stressful running around trying to find everyone, but overall it was fun. Except for the part where me and Elder W both nearly died on the way there. Neither of us has really been in cars at all for the past while, and riding a tour bus up and down twisty mountain roads is not really a good way to be reintroduced to them. Ugh.
As for investigators, we ended up postponing Brother L's baptismal date. He just doesn't really seem to have any great desire to get baptized right now. Honestly, I think that he's got some desire, but part of the problem is that he's still really hard to communicate with. We also haven't finished teaching all of the doctrine. We're going to keep working with him, and we're going to try really hard to ask better questions to help him open up. I also really want to find him a good fellowshipper - so far he's been too shy to talk to ward members even though some of them have gone out of their way to try and get to know him. It's probably going to be a bit of a challenge.
E is still completely unmotivated to do anything. We tried really hard this week to talk to him about the importance of having goals in life and how religion can help him. Unfortunately, he's just so lazy that he seems happy enough to sit at home and sleep all day and have no friends and hate his parents. Elder W took that lesson pretty hard - at the end, E basically said that anything he ever said about wanting to change was just because he was too embarrassed to reject us. Elder W genuinely cares about him, and it's tough for him to see E throwing his life in the toilet like this. The only thing E has shown interest in is reading scriptures, so we're probably going to start doing that with him once in a while.
We also saw Sister L, the woman that we've been teaching since I got to Tai Po. We haven't seen her in about a month because by this point we've partially dropped her because she's stuck. She hasn't made any real progress, and basically just made a bunch of weird excuses why she couldn't read, pray or come to church. We committed to call her every other day this week to remind her to read and pray, so we'll so how things go. Honestly, I don't think a lot is going to happen with that, but it's worth a shot.
E is still completely unmotivated to do anything. We tried really hard this week to talk to him about the importance of having goals in life and how religion can help him. Unfortunately, he's just so lazy that he seems happy enough to sit at home and sleep all day and have no friends and hate his parents. Elder W took that lesson pretty hard - at the end, E basically said that anything he ever said about wanting to change was just because he was too embarrassed to reject us. Elder W genuinely cares about him, and it's tough for him to see E throwing his life in the toilet like this. The only thing E has shown interest in is reading scriptures, so we're probably going to start doing that with him once in a while.
We also saw Sister L, the woman that we've been teaching since I got to Tai Po. We haven't seen her in about a month because by this point we've partially dropped her because she's stuck. She hasn't made any real progress, and basically just made a bunch of weird excuses why she couldn't read, pray or come to church. We committed to call her every other day this week to remind her to read and pray, so we'll so how things go. Honestly, I don't think a lot is going to happen with that, but it's worth a shot.
Some of the other missionaries nearby are also doing pretty well. The Mandarin Elders are absolutely killing it right now - they've had a ton of people at church lately. They even brought this one guy who's even taller than me. (!) I was a little alarmed to see my clear supremacy challenged. Plus, if nothing else, the other Cantonese companionship finally found somebody who's not crazy or a high school student. It's been a while for them. Plus, she's a girl, and our relief society is really, really good at fellowshipping - so many people jumped on her that at first I thought she was somebody's sister from out of town or something. Now if only we could get our Elder's Quorum like that...
Oh, thinking of which, no, I haven't seen General Conference yet. We see it a week delayed here because the live broadcast is really, really late at night. Ironically, some of our members stayed up to watch it anyway, but, it's a lot nicer for everyone else to see it at a more reasonable time a week later. I'll definitely let you know how Elder Wong's talk is - I'm excited to see. Though, I think it's a bit funny that they chose him to be the first non-native speaker since his English is also not bad... he's done some talks and stuff for the mission and he does just fine.
So that's most of what I can think of for his week. Sounds like you guys had a pretty busy time with the run up to Washington.Sounds like Dad's still got a pretty rough time ahead of him too though. Though... perhaps this is incredibly stupid... but who is Aril again? I can't quite remember right now. Good luck on all that stuff though - and make sure to stay safe. That's a ton of driving ahead of you....
I'll see if I can send you guys some pictures from Tai O and other stuff.
Love you guys lots!
Elder Brennan McEwan
Elder McEwan and Elder Wong in Tai O
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