March 12, 2012

Well, there has been a couple of new things that are happening, like transfers and such, so lets start there. mM new companions name is Elder Edwards. He is from Draper Utah. He is the oldest of 4 children. He has 4 younger sisters. He has been out for about 15 months, and feels like he is about to die. (die in missionary terms is going home.) He isnt trunkie yet, but he is deffinately a different compaion thats for sure. If anything, I'm just glad that we dont have any real tension between each other. I will just have to send some video clips or something to show what he is like. He isnt bad or anything, he is just much more different than Elder Johnson. It's difficult for me to describe. I suppose that all my companions will be realatively different, but Elder Edwards is very unique. alright, so, now my area. I am serving in the Knightdale area. Being here is tripping me out. Knightdale is right next to Raleigh, infact, some of our area goes into Raleigh. The reason why Knightdale is tripping me out is because our district meets at the Raleigh stake center, and I have found out that Johnathan lives just a few blocks away from the stake center. I want to ask President Cotterell about what I am allowed to do and what I should do. Johnathan lives just outside of the borders of my area!!! I will let you know on how things go concerning meeting with Johnathan.

As for getting slammed by day light saving, I know how you feel. The church that I am attending is also at 9am. However, our bishop wanted us to be there early for some meetings, so we had to be there around 7am. In order to get to the church at 7 we have to get up and travel which takes about an hour. So that puts us waking up at 6. Take daylight saving in, and we are really waking up at 5. Yikes. But I made it through the day without complaining or sleeping.

When I first came into the area, there was only 1 person who we were teaching, and even then, he isn't that solid. It has been difficult to find new people to teach, but I have truely seen that our witness (or our finding) comes after the trail of our faith. For instance: 2 days ago, we were trying to see a few people that were in the area book who were formers and potential investigators. In the past, this has been the main source of our finding. We would usually use the principal of proximity which our mission president has counciled us to use. The principal of proximity (or POP) means that we will try to meet some people that we feel we should visit, and then we knock on some of the doors around (usually not more than 5-6) But anyway, we were doing what we normally did, and we saw that we accidentally didnt plan as well as we could have. We were left on our bikes with nothing left to do. This has never happened to me before, and my senior companion didnt seem to know what to do either, or really be motivated to do anything. But this was what I think was the trail of my faith. I didnt know what else to do to fufill my purpose as a missionary at the time and we were being rejected left and right. Nothing seemed to be working right. Even though I didnt have any direction really, we started to go more on the tracting side of finding others rather than POP side. In my heart I sincerly pleaded with my father in heaven saying, " I dont know what else to do, I'm trying my best, plaese help me." and within the next few doors, someone accepted us in and listened to our message and we had a great discussion. We have another appointment with him later on. It's so interesting to me how the lords work goes along. It's really a testimony to me that it really is the lords work, he is just letting me be a part of it.

Love Elder Masulonis