Ghetto

Monday 17th March, 2014

So this week has been a rollercoaster, the area is on fire, they have so much work to do, they had 22 lessons this week and found 2 new investigators.

 

The area is pretty ghetto, but the people are humble and willing to listen. They're working with too many people to talk about each of them, but the ones which stand out are Mary Allen and Eric. There's an area called the 'Sundance Apartments', it's pretty much the Byker of Las Vegas. Sam saw someone start their car by lifting the hood, pulling something inside to start the engine, then driving off, he has never seen that done before.

 

Mary is trying to overcome an alcohol addiction, it was so bad that she had her daughter taken away (back to England in fact!). She breaks down into tears a lot and tells them how much she misses her. They were teaching her the word of wisdom, and she turns to Sam and asks if they're ever going to give up on her. They promised her that they never would, and more importantly Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father never would either. They left her apartment with a trash bag of her alcohol, tea and coffee.

 

She came to church for the first time yesterday, she got a lot out of it, unfortunately after church, she relapsed and called the paramedics, Sam think she's been admitted, one of the members here picked her up and took her to the hospital.

 

Eric is carrying around a lot of guilt and pain from the past, he's really struggling to let it go, however they had a lesson with him on Saturday morning, and apparently two things which he's never done is let anyone in his back yard or in his house. They had a lesson with him in the back yard, and before they left they were invited into his house briefly. The next day he came to church, and Sam didn't realize that it was the first time he had come to church in 20 years! Elder Bowser says he can see something changing in him, so they're going to keep working with him and help him unburden himself of all the stuff that's happened in his past.

 

They also got asked to speak last minute at church, they got told about 24 hours beforehand so it wasn't too bad, a lot of people enjoyed their talks, they were on looking at others as Christ would.

 

They also had the opportunity to talk to some people who were trying to mock them, they responded with love and they didn't know what to do and just ended up walking away.

 

They heard there was a lady who jumped out of her car near their area and killed herself, there's also a ton of police cars here. This area is anything but "quiet" or "boring"!

 

There's so much work to do in this area, they're actually considering assigning another set of missionaries to their area to help out. It's only 2 square miles but there's a ton of people here, there's no shortage of people to teach, the ward directory is also 25 pages long!