10 Oct. 2011

Family,

So there is this very less-active woman, Florence, in our area who was baptized in Saipan in the 80s but when she moved to Palau, the church was so far that she started going to the Protestant church - which is in our village. So after almost 30 years of that, she's become pretty devoted. However, she agreed to let us teach her granddaughter (that she adopted as her own daughter - that happens a lot). So we arrived the next day and the Florence had given the girl, Medicine (I thought it was Madison, but after asking her to spell it, sure enough it's not), an extra copy of the Book of Mormon, and as we were watching the Restoration, Florence was humming along to "oh how lovely was the morning...." At first I couldn't tell where the humming was coming from but afterward I asked Florence, "were you humming along to that song?" she said, "...yeah...but I can't remember the words." And then she said the closing prayer and asked God to bless "our prophet" and all the members of the church. There may be hope for her yet! It was a pretty interesting turn of events. She has been pretty obstinate up until this point. At first she told us she was baptized, then she changed her story and said she wasn't, and back and forth. To clear things up I called the office in Guam and had them check with the service center. Turns out she was, and that's what we told her. As soon as she realized she was caught, she's been a little easier to work with.

My whole mission I've struggled with people saying they will do things (read, come to church, etc) and not actually meaning it. Whether they do it to make us happy or to get us to go away or what I don't know. I don't know if it's the same in other parts of the world, but it's pretty disappointing. Especially because I feel like it's magnified in the area I'm in now. I'm just trying to stay loving and positive and try to be patient with them. I have to somehow help them understand the idea of a commitment.

Another of our investigators is an alcoholic, and we figured this wasn't going to be a good weekend to see him since it's payday week, but we thought we'd stop by and show him we didn't forget about him. Sure enough he was drunk and he tried to hug me and stuff, so we said we'd come back next week. I can't imagine that people really understand how foolish they become. They cannot possibly understand and continue to do it.

I don't know if I've talked about this yet, but even though I know I have like 3 weeks left, I haven't felt any different. I don't know if it's because I've just been doing the same thing for so long or what, but I just can't comprehend doing anything else. So, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing until someone tells me what day it actually is.

Love,

Elder Barlow