Week 26

 August 2, 2021

WEEK 26

This week we had a pretty solid week full of wild stories, and miracles. We had a ton of our friends drop us, but we were blessed to find 4 new people to teach! I will share a few things with you all, and then a spiritual thought!

Well for starters I want to share a very interesting experience we had... Do you guys remember Tim? The guy who thought he was Jesus? Last Monday we were driving back home and we got a call from a number we didn't recognize. We answered the call, and Tim's roommate Robert started telling us about how he had demons in him and he needed us to help him cast them out. We were like uhhhh okay. So, that evening we went over and we were really scared because we knew Tim might be there and sure enough, as soon as we rolled up, Tim was sitting there on the porch with Robert. We were like "oh crap". Fast forward a little bit, SOMEHOW we got wrapped into coming back the next day! Elder Kofford and I came over the next day, and we had planned to do our lesson with them on the porch. But, as we were sitting Tim came out and was like "hey! Why don't we go down to my room and have the lesson." Of course, it would only be fitting for Tim to live in the basement. Tim was like "c'mon! Come and sit down." Then he and Robert climb down the stairs. Elder Kofford and I looked at eachother, and we were scared . As we went down, I sat down first and I watched as Tim closed the door behind us, and locked it. Elder Kofford was a lot more scared than I was, and I am glad he didn't see the door lock because he was scared haha. 

The whole lesson was just wild. This is the situation we were in. Robert is literally nuts and kept looking at the ground and pointing and talking about how the floor was going to swallow him. All he was talking about was the demons that were haunting him. When I would teach him, he would look at me and it looked like he was looking behind me. And now we move to Tim. He locked the door behind us, and then choose a seat at this table that was overlooking our seating. He started smoking a cigarette he rolled himself up and said "I will sit at the head of the table. I have sat at the head of the table since I was born." These guys are absolutely nuts! Tim still thinks he is converting us to be his disciples. He does genuinely want to help his friend, but we have received a few calls from Tim and he is like checking in on us. The best part was we expected them to show up at church Sunday because Tim was going to drive them there in his unregistered truck. AND it was a fast Sunday so I thought it would have been highly entertaining to see these guys pull up and start talking to the congregation. But alas, they didn't make it. The whole lesson was really sketchy and the spirit was NOT there. I actually could literally feel it leave as soon as we entered his basement. We are probably going to stop teaching them. Elder Kofford said he thought it was going to turn into that one movie where the missionaries got kidnapped in Russia lol.

So, about 4 of the people we were teaching this week dropped us. But, we found 4 new people! We had a lesson with a really cool guy named Jake and he is AWESOME. We set up another lesson with him and when we got onto the call his friend from Tennessee was there! It was so cool, and the guy had us rollin' laughing. Elder Kofford and I have problems with Facebook Finding where we have quite a few guys hitting on us... Charles from Tennessee told us to "just block em' all." We thought that was hilarious haha. He would just tell us these stories that we could only catch half of what he said, but it was incredible. But, when we taught him I could see the Spirit working. He got really serious when we taught him about the church, and we are getting him a copy of the Book of Mormon with some local missionaries where he lives.   

There are thousands of stories I could share, but I don't want this email to be too long. My spiritual thought for this week is this:

We had a lesson with our recent converts Mary and Alan. They are on fire! I think I forgot to mention this last week, but Mary texted us last week and said "Hello this is Sister Mary!" We just thought it was so fun to hear that from Mary! She calls herself Sister Mary now it is so cute! She is all-in on her conversion. Her countenance has changed, and she seems so much happier now! The power that comes from peoples' choices to become members of the church and make a covenant with God through baptism is powerful. I can testify that it changes people's lives and it has been a privilege to watch these people's lives change. 

Thank you for all your support. I love you all. Have a good week!

-Elder Elliott