Our two Chinese investigators are moving to Winnepeg. It's just like when you are having a really good conversation with someone on the street, you're about to give them a Book of Mormon, and suddenly their bus comes. Dang it! But we got 4 more new investigators this week to take their place.
This week I went on exchanges with Elder Duce, our new district leader. He's been out about 3 weeks longer than me and has a completely different style than I'm used to. Of course, this was the first exchange I have been on with someone from the East mission. In the West, we have the Great North zone, which is pretty desolate when it comes to population. We have a lot of low population areas like Stayner and Walkerton. Most West missionaries had a chance to serve in areas like that where they cold have long Gospel conversations with the people they talked to, and this became the standard for contacting. President Brower taught us to have "teach-nows" which were basically mini-lessons in finding situations. In the East however, nearly every missionary has served in downtown Toronto, where you have less than a minute to peak someone's interest and set up a return appointment. They quickly gauge a contact's interest level and then move on to the next person, talking to as many people as possible. Smalltalk is nearly nonexistent. I liked the concise, powerful feel of Elder Duce's contacts, as I prefer concision by nature and I don't like talking about dogs and the weather. It was definitely a great experience to be able to learn from someone elses style. I've come to the conclusion that the mission needs that style. And it needs the smalltalk, long conversation style. And somewhere in the middle of all that, the area of Pickering needs my style. There isn't a right or wrong way to go about it, as long as you aren't robotic and repetitive.
Traveling with Elder Duce also gave me a greater desire to just dive into the scriptures for some reason. I just to learn all that I can about the Gospel while I'm serving here. I find myself looking forward to personal study and I have a greater thirst for knowledge than I've had before, a thirst that could only come from God.
Last night we ate dinner with a young couple in our ward and had a lesson afterwards with their atheist neighbors. For convenience, we'll call them the Darwin family, which is what we usually call them because we can't pronounce their last name. They are quite nice and have two kids. They even have a dog named Darwin. We taught them a little bit about God, families, and prophets. It was very difficult at first to establish middle ground, because neither of them had ever believed in God and they were deeply rooted in science. They look at the world in a completely different light, and it was a learning experience for me just to be able to see things from their perspective. Knowing what I know about the Gospel, life and how things work make sense to me. But life makes sense to them, too--they have explanations for why things happen the way they do. That's why I'm glad that we have the Holy Ghost. There are hundreds of philosophies and ideas that make sense to those that believe them, but the only way that we can know absolute truth from opinions is by the power of the Holy Ghost. The difficulty is getting them to recognize that the Holy Ghost isn't just chemicals in your brain.
Have a good week everyone.
--Elder Wade
