Family,
So this week has been...hard to remember....Things start to blur really fast out here. The ward is doing really well, E. Cherry and I are helping out the ward choir, that's a fun little break every sunday afternoon--I never thought I would be saying that about choir.
This week we had a lesson with an enormous family down in Stanstead, about an hour's drive south from Sherbrooke. We discovered that when we drove into the town, we were less than 3 miles from America. I could have driven straight into Vermont! What a strange feeling. The lesson went horrible, the parents were constantly yelling, at each other, at the kids, the kids were yelling at the parents, and at each other, we abandoned the thought of trying to teach them a full lesson and somehow squeezed out a good scripture and spiritual thought. The family is less active, but their two younger sons haven't been baptized yet, and the parents really want them to go through the lessons and be baptized, so we'll be making a lot of trips to the Vermont border in the next couple weeks.
We had an excellent lesson with our Gay investigator, we watched the testaments-and by the end he outright told us that he believed that Christ visited the Americas and started tearing up. But he's had a lot of rejection in his life, being gay-he's not even really gay, he's like a non-practicing gay...it's strange... so we invited him to church but he's just too scared of being rejected there. But we'll find a way to get him there.
We were sitting in church, and saw a girl sitting a couple rows ahead of us. Neither of us recognized her, we later found out she wasn't a member! We had an investigator at church without even knowing it! She came this week as well, the members are really working well with her, so we're giving her time to come to us, we don't want to push ourselves onto her and scare her away.
We had a couple from Madagascar visit our english class, they liked it and they are bringing their children next time...so hopefully we have some time to prepare a lesson for them. Also a Columbian guy is coming and bringing his daughter, so we'll have six new students in the class who don't speak any english. As my Iranian friend would say "Dat's Crazy."
One of the biggest problems here in Sherbrooke I've found is that missionaries in the past here, haven't really done anything, except baptize people who were not ready to be baptized. Most of our recent converts are inactive or going inactive because they were hardly taught anything before their baptism. Alot of them think church is more like a social club, and have no testimony--so we spend a lot of precious time fixing past missionaries lazy halfbaked work and reteaching these recent converts. But you know, work is work when you are a missionary. E. Cherry and I get along extremely well, we usually spend our in-between-houses time translating songs into french, songs like "There can be miracles" from Prince of egypt. All songs sound better in french.
E. Cherry and I have gotten really good at winging lessons in our Sunday school classes, because of course the default teachers are always the missionaries, the past two weeks we've been improv teaching, it has it's own thrill to it, that's for sure.
We had another investigator at church yesterday, the mother of the girl that comes on her own, and the older single ladies of the ward put on a dinner after church. While this investigator was eating and telling everyone about herself, (we were in the cultural hall) a girl kicked a ball and it hit her square in the face. I just about choked on my food, my first thought was "This is hilarious." I could just picture the rumor going around how mormons lure you in, and then hit you in the face when you least expect it. But she was cool about it, she got a little angry and rambled off something in spanish, but hey, everyone does that here. Spanish is the Angry language.
Well that's about all that's happened so far around here, E. Cherry and I are going to rock our own little thanksgiving this week, it will be...well pitiful. Neither of us like to cook and we found a sale on Ramen, so we've been having oatmeal and ramen this week, a 'self motivator to get more dinner appointments'
That's about all, keep up the good work at home,
E. Holm
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