Monday, February 24, 2014

A long week with slow progress, but lots of faith

Family and Friends,

This past week has been a bit slow due to the difficulty accomplishing all of our goals. We have been working on getting one of our Investigators baptized. We have been struggling because he lives about 30 minutes away and despite the 750 miles allotment we receive weekly, it's still difficult to save miles and visit him daily. However, we were able to meet with several people.

On the positive, one of our less active member came to church! He has been struggling for a few years now because of multiple jobs and messed up priorities of girls and cars instead of church. After meeting with him multiple times for the past many years, (many of those simply attempts to contact him but with no success) we were able to not only meet with him, but he thanked us sincerely for visiting him the many times we have, and he said he promised to go to church. We got the Ward down in the Texas Houston South Mission to provide a ride for him weekly, and now he has the possibly opportunity to serve a Mission!

One thing we were able to do this week is discuss the problems in our area and figured out solutions and magnets to solve them. One is for all the Deaf to receive enough money to take the bus to CRR, a place in downtown that we go serve Tuesdays in the afternoon. There, they can learn English and apply for jobs. Then with the Church's permission to affiliate LDS Employment website, we can use their database to connect with the volunteers and skills at CRR to give the Deaf jobs more easily. Then they can make money and not be bored or whatever. The other idea is to have a class at Fallbrook every Wednesday night at 7 for the full Stake to attend, as well as non members. We can teach ASL there and help everyone connect with the Deaf better. It will help Inwood connect more personally with the Deaf. It will be a source for the Inwood Missionaries to contact and teach non members. It will be a way for us to find those whom wish to join the Branch and help interpret or just be a member. It will help make our problem seen more. It will give us more reasons to talk with hearing people on the streets. There are so many benefits and I hope we can get it setup next month!

On Monday last week while driving in the direction of home from shopping, Elder Mitchell felt impressed to ask our dear Sisters from church if we could visit her and her husband. They have been residing in a hospital for the past month about, because he has been struggling to breath and has been on 100% machine. This sister has been one of our interpreters for our Branch and has been involved with the growth of it for many many years. We love her so much and were saddened to find out that he had just recently passed away, prior to our text. We all attended the funeral services, which were held on Saturday. It was a sad but peaceful service, as many old Missionaries from 10 years ago who served here came, including a Sister from 10 years ago! (back when we had 10 Missionaries, 4 Elders, 4 Sisters and a Senior Couple) We got to connect really fast and gave them updates on how we were doing.

One of our struggles has been with a member and her boyfriend.  She is Deaf, he is Hard of Hearing. One of the commandments we LDS members follow is the Law of Chastity. One rule in this law is that a man and a woman cannot live together in the same house unless they are married. They aren't married, she is a member and he is not. We struggled with them on Thursday to try and help them understand that right now they are breaking a commandment. We said they should get married in March or separate. He argued with us saying he didn't want to hear about marriage or separation. We struggled to help him and have felt frustrated and sadness because of his lack of desire to follow the commandment. However, we ahve faith that he can change.

We were able to meet with a referral. He is a very smart Deaf person and lives near one of our members. We hope to meet with him this week and start teaching him.

That's been the basic highlights of this past week.

I know that with only 4 months left, I don't have all the time in the world to do stuff. I hope to work as smart as I can with the time I have left, to help those whom are Deaf learn about the Gospel and receive Salvation through Baptism and Temple work.

Thanks for all of your prayers, I will continue to pray for all of you as well!

Love,

Elder Gardner.

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