February 6, 2012

Wow, I don't even know where to start....

We flew into Albuquerque Monday morning, (Frank, the very first thing I saw when coming out of the clouds was a golf course, and people were playing. Thought you might like that.) went to the temple and took a few pictures, went to the mission home for lunch, had interviews with President Miller and then that afternoon we were out knocking on doors! The first guy I talked to I thought he was going to hit me with a bucket... good stuff. So my trainer is Elder Willden! From Pokey. He's the bomb. If there is a scripture he doesn't know, I haven't found it yet. He's been serving for 21 months though, so in the mission lingo, I will eventually kill my father. I have told him that if he gets trunky on me I will slap him silly. We are serving in Santa Fe West! it's a new area, so we are opening it. Which is super awesome and super frustrating at the same time. Yes the Rockwoods are in my area which I am sure that you know about. haha It's legit!

So Santa Fe is sweet, but there is SOOO much potential here it's not even funny. With all the people that are here there should be like 4 wards and a stake center, but no, there is one small ward. It's about to take off though, we know it! The ward list is almost 13 pages long, but still only maybe 200 people are at church. We have been going through the ward list one page at a time to see what is going on. We've found over 10 bad phone numbers, over 5 people/families that have moved, and a TON of less actives. We are only on page 6.... So we have been visiting less actives and what not. Between me, Elder Willden, Elder Espanosa, and Elder White, (Santa Fe East elders) our goal is to make it so they have to split the ward. It can be done! We are really trying to get the ward and everybody here excited about missionary work because this won't be possible without the members.

The first couple of days were kinda tough because we moved into a new apartment which was completely empty. So we have done our best to make it a place to live. I miss my hot showers though... BUT! Elder Willden is an amazing cook, our first meal was chiken alfredo! We've also had scone type things, omelets, and one morning we made cinnamon rolls from scratch and took some to our neighbors upstairs, and she started crying. (No not because they were that bad Courtney, Brittin and Frank!) We are pretty sure she is a single mom with two young kids. We haven't been able to contact her again though but it is on our to do list. We do have a few investigators that we have been teaching, and we have tracted into a few. I will report all about that next week, hopefully some great things happen. Speaking of tracting, we sure have run into some interesting people! One guy we talked to on the street pretty much yelled at us for about 10 min straight. So in case you didn't know, apparently our church is false. ha! It actually was a testimony builder for me as weird as it sounds. because everything that angry man was yelling at us and accusing us of we had studied that morning in comp. study. So we could reply to all his crazy things. Plus like I said earlier Elder Willden has the whole bible memorized pretty much, and we were trying so hard not to bible bash with him. It finally ended with him yelling. " I shake the dust off my feet at you!" I felt sorry for the man, I sure hope he has a change of heart sometime. We also tracted into a gay couple... haha I picked up on it as soon as he started talking but my poor companion didn't... The guy finally had to tell him he was gay and I was trying so hard not to laugh. Oh Elder Willden! It's so hard not to get frustrated when people won't talk to you, I want to grab them by the shirt and say LISTEN TO ME!!!! grrr. We did hand out a lot of copies of the Book of Mormon and cards and set up some return appointments! We even placed a Spanish BOM! Cool stuff.

Cool quick story, we were teaching a man named Leroy and boy is he a lot of work. He went to school for like 20 years and thinks he knows so much about the bible and everything. His biggest thing is he doesn't believe he needs to be baptized by water, just fire. He's one of those guys who says he prays and prays and prays and says he's so humble more humble than we are. (Like the story of the publican) Anyway, he would never let us talk and when we would try he would butt in with something out of the bible or something. Needless to say I was getting very frustrated. So finally I just flat out stopped him and bore my testimony to him and told him to put aside all that knowledge he has, and I told him no, you aren't humble, and you will never get an answer to your prayers if you aren't. Well the spirit came into the room and we both know he felt it. So we closed and left. We checked up on him last night and he was a lot more willing to listen to us. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Thanks for the updates on everything ma and pa. I'm glad that Court's temple experience was amazing, I knew it would be! The pictures of Benson are way neat. He's a stud. Mitch wrote me about his call, I'm so pumped for him! Dylan better get that back feeling better dangit. Tell him to hit a 3 for me next game, and Matt too.

Well I know a ton more things happened this week but I just can't remember all that I was going to say. I am so dang excited to be serving here! The people are awesome, the members of the ward are awesome, and I know the work is about to take off!! Ya'll have a great week and be good! I love you all!!

Elder Turnbow