Deep in southern California rises a newsletter from the depths of the burning traffic. Once again, it's another P-day and yur boi, Elder Coxson, is at it again. The grind literally never stops.
This week we've basically given up traditional missionary work. It doesn't seem to be working, and we got some neat inspiration from a family that lives outside of our area. We pull up to this brother's house because he asked for a blessing of healing, and we were telling him that rich people are hard to preach to. He and his wife basically told us that their kids were having stonks with innovative ideas.
So anyways, new ideas are starting to generate while we finish up some old planning. This next week might pop off, I'll let you know. The last week of the transfer, pretty crazy.
So as we were walking house to house, we see this little red flyer on the ground. We pick up and it's a coupon for a $5 large pizza from one of the local shops here. This was just a testimony to me that God does provide for his servants, sometimes in the form of pizza. We ordered a buffalo and ranch chicken pizza (because we hate feeling not sick) and enjoyed the fruit of God's love. Consider the lilies, they don't order $16 pizzas and run out of MSF.
Another story while walking house to house, we see these people standing on their roof (this is normal in Cali) so my comp yells from across the street at them. "Hey, have you guys heard of the Book of Mormon?" They yell something unintelligible back, but somebody pulls over and asks us if we're LDS. We're not, but my comp said yeah. The driver says that he's from Utah, so we yell up to the people on the roof that this guy has heard of the Book of Mormon. We invite these brothers to come to church, but none of them came. Tis the life of a missionary.
As you can tell, our sanity is just about gone. Yelling on roofs is only the beginning, as we've switched up our door approach too. When people answer the door, see the nametags and go "heck no, not interested" we hit them with the "don't even worry about it, we're not selling solar. We're actually selling pest!" Gets them every time, 25% of the time.
"You see that nasty bug up there? Yeah, you got bugs all over your house. I can hear them crawling in your walls. See your neighbor? We helped them out last week. We'll cut you a deal: we have a book that bugs are all afraid of. If you let Jesus in your life, the bugs will leave out of respect."
Unfortunately, this has yet to work. It might have to do with the fact that I can't keep a straight face while trying to sell pest with the Book of Mormon, idk. But if you think the madness we've gotten into ends here, just wait.
Here in San Diego, there are these little 'take a book, leave a book' things on the side of the road. We have a large number of pamphlets in our house for some reason, we we've started dropping them in every mini library we find. We leave our phone number on them, just in case.
One thing people do here in PB is when they see us walking down the sidewalk they will cross the street so as not to walk by us. This week we've started running across the street to chase them down. It produces a funny response 80% of the time, but has yet to work. I guess people don't like happiness running at them, their loss.
On Sunday while we were knocking one of our inactive's door down, we noticed a huge painting of Jesus in somebody's house. We walk over and ring the doorbell (people in La Jolla have gates so you can't knock the door) and some people answer the door. We start talking with them, and aparently they're the parents of the home owner. We then hear the door bell start yelling at us that they weren't interested. We ignore the doorbell and continue talking over the irrate yelling. Eventually the yelling stops and the parents get a call. They put it on speaker phone (because they're old people) and it's the son again telling them that they were not to let us in at all costs and to get back in the house. I don't think the son wanted the joyous message of the gospel, but that's just a hunch. Their loss shrug.
This week we got a referral from somebody who wants to learn more about the church. We meet up with this guy, and he was like, "yeah them Mormon girls are really hot. I'm want to get baptized so I can marry one." No comment on that interaction, I'm still processing what happened. PMG chapter 14 go brrrrr I guess.
In Mandarin, the word for ice cream is Bīngqílín. Put in Murican, it sounds like big chillin. So now you know the inside joke. It sounds really lame now that it's on paper, but my comp and I think it's funny when we say that to each other.
We had somebody tell us this week that Sister missionaries shouldn't be a thing, but if they really want to serve they should be paired with an Elder so it's not awkward for the people they teach. Time to write a suggestion to headquarters? (For legal reasons, this is a joke, no corn flakes)
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go on an exchange with my ZL, Elder Cook. It was pretty hype, we went and gave a lady tech support for her new laptop. We walked around UCSD and watched as he walked up to people and started talking in Chinese. The reactions on their faces are priceless, we got a few numbers and had a good afternoon.
One of these days, somebody will realize what's best for them and come unto Christ. Has that happened here in PB yet? No, but all things are possible with Christ. I don't know when that will be, but if we continue with faith all people will be brought to a knowledge eventually. There was an earthquake out in El Centro (an area in my mission), the dreadful day of the Lord is at the doors.
Be safe and sane, my friends. Get the heck out of these peoples' lives, Satan. Love y'all.
-- Elder Coxson
P.S. - Sorry for the weird email, it's just been a weird week.
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