We came to the conclusion that a lot of our investigators just really aren't interested in changing. They want to learn, and they're fine with us coming over, but they're not doing anything with what we're giving them. We're doing all the work, and that doesn't lead to conversion. So we've had to drop a few people this week. We had a good talk with one on Thursday, about whether she was willing to consider joining the church, and basically the answer she gave us was that she's had too many changes in her life in the past couple years to consider more change right now. It was sad to reach that conclusion with her, but the member we've brought with us to the lessons said she'd keep in contact with her, so it's not like we're cutting all ties.
Because we had so many people fall through and because we dropped some people that we saw on a regular basis we had more time to find through our own efforts this week, which means knocking. I haven't had to spend a lot of knocking since I left Moncks Corner, and I have to admit that I tend to have a pessimistic attitude about knocking. I think of it as a time filler, not as an effective way to spread the gospel. We do find people to teach through knocking, but more often than not those people just turn into leads that we try a million times to catch, but it's never a good time for them to actually sit down and talk.
And my whole mission I've worried that we'll run out of things to do, run out of houses to knock, or end up knocking all day every day, so I've tended to drag my feet, to try and find anything else we can do before going tracting. But the other day when I was thinking about it I realized that the busier we are today, the busier we'll be tomorrow. As we show the Lord that we trust Him enough to try our very best and to work our very hardest, then He's going to help us. We've definitely seen that this week, because we actually did end up finding quite a few new people to teach.
Saturday afternoon we went to check on a lead, a man who knew some members of the ward. We'd stopped by lots of times before but had never been able to sit down with them because the wife was always at work. This had been going on for months, but this time we finally decided we were just going to go through the Restoration pamphlet with the dad on the porch. We did and at the end he told us that he'd been having some concerns about things that were happening at his church, and that he'd been feeling like it may be time for his family to find a new church. We invited him to pray about what we'd shared, and ask God if he should find a new church. He did and then said "I know what I need to do. Our church is small and needs everybody it can get, but I have to do what's best for my family, and I think it's time for us to leave." We were both pretty excited and surprised because normally when we invite people to pray they don't get an immediate answer like that. We set up to come back the next day and teach the whole family. Luckily this family live right down the road from a family in the ward, so we brought the husband and wife with us to the appointment and it went really well. They haven't committed to be baptized yet, but they're thinking about it and said they'd try coming to church.
So even though the week started off really rough, it ended pretty well and I'm feeling much more optimistic about how things are going here. We're really being blessed and while everything isn't happening in our timing, we are seeing God bless us as we do our best. I'm grateful to be a missionary; it's the best calling in the world.
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