Holiday Greetings from The Great OCM!!!
First
week as district leader and I had a district meeting on Wednesday where
I am supposed to teach assigned topics. Our mission has a goal to reach
500 baptisms by the end of the year and I talked a lot about having the
faith to do it. I did a readiness activity where I made a path of chairs
to a big 500 sign and then strung fishing string between all the
chairs. The Elders had to try and get through but I made it impossible.
We ended up having to "cut through our doubts to reach our goal." Other
than that I am enjoying my new calling even though it can be difficult
at times.
One cool spiritual experience this week. We were
working in Bexley (which is a suburb of Columbus and a more wealthy
area) and we were about to head to another part of our area when the
Spirit constrained me from doing so. I don't know how to explain it but I
just felt like there was a conflict within myself emotionally,
spiritually whether or not we should head to our next area to work. It
was very powerful and I realized the spirit was telling me to stay in
Bexley. We decided to go to an old Media Referral we received over a
month ago and wasn't interested. A different person answered the door this
time, his 18 yr. old son, and immediately let us in. We began teaching
him, explaining why we came on a mission and what it entails. He was
very interested and has family in Utah who are Mormons. We then moved
into the first lesson, however, half-way through (before we reached the
first vision) his dad came in the room and was polite but did not want
us there so the lesson was cut short and we left. Now sometimes when we
receive a spiritual prompting it doesn't mean we are going to find some
great miracle. In this case we were able to teach someone but it will be
hard to go back and teach because the head of the household does not
want us to. The spirit works in mysterious ways though and I know that
we needed to be there and said what needed to be said. It is not very
often I get distinct spiritual promptings so it was . . .refreshing.
Other than that it was a very hard week, mainly due to
the holidays (by the way the Sherman's in our ward fed us and it was
delicious), and during the holiday it seemed like all our investigators
were either out of town or too busy with family so we had almost no
appointments. Plus Saturday was the OSU vs Michigan football game which
is a huge rivalry, so from 12-4 on Saturday the town went dead during
the game. No one opened their door to us. I hear Ohio won 42-41 so I
don't blame them for being glued to the screen. They call this game "the
blood bath" and I have never seen such a big rivalry in sports before.
Cool thing though Ohio has this tradition where when someone shouts
O, H! whoever is within earshot will shout back I, O! So while riding
bikes people would shout that at us and we would respond I O!
President and Sister Nilsen will be coming to our ward
on Sunday to talk about missionary work. That puts some pressure on us
missionaries because we have to make sure we have a million
investigators at church, but we will do it, well, maybe not a million
but we should have a few.
I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week in
preparation for Christmas! Remember that the real purpose of the holiday
is in celebration of the coming of Jesus Christ, our Savior.
Love, Elder Beutler
