This last week was PACKED. We barely even had time to test out other ways we could do proselyting because of how much stuff we had going on. I had to skip some studies at least twice this week too. It's an awesome burden to have though, I love seeing the work progress in this little corner of the vineyard.
I'll just start out with my favorite part: we got two investigators to come to church! I don't know why but it seems like one of the hardest things I've had to deal with during training has been getting investigators to come to church. Up until yesterday, I've had maybe three Sundays where one investigator has attended sacrament so I was pumped to see not one but two investigators come into the chapel. I was grinning the whole sacrament, so awesome. One of them didn't want to come until he could get all of his family to come but we managed to finally help him understand that he has to be an example for his family. We've been working really close with him and I think his wife and kids might be starting to soften up. I'm excited to see how he'll progress this week. And the other one is this sweet old man that just showed up to English class and said he wanted to come to church with us on Sunday. He asked for a Book of Mormon all on his own yesterday so I'm pretty interested to see how things are going to work out with him as well.
In other news, we picked up a new investigator who is had primarily English interest to begin with but is super receptive to the gospel. He's super homie too; he wants to take us to KFC this week. Excited for him... We had our last district meeting of the transfer this week. Elder Lunt, our dying district leader, gave us his final testimony and exhorted us to LOVE THE PEOPLE. Sometimes we come at somebody just flinging the gospel in their face, trying to shove them on the track to start progressing, but what Elder Lunt told us is that "you have to feed people temporally before you can feed them spiritually". In a simpler sense, you have to be people's friends first, show sincere interest in their lives and who they are in order to have their hearts softened and ready to hear what we have to say. What did Christ do before the Sermon on the Mount? He fed A TON of people, then laid down the business. Some people might need more than others, some people a lot less, but I know if we go about the work in a manner of love we can have so much more success.
I also wanted to share something I read this week. My trainer Elder Fox got a huge package in the mail and along with it was some LDS literature. He allowed me to pillage and read some and I got the chance to read a book called "Changed by His Grace" by Brad Wilcox, all about defining what exactly grace is and how we can better recognize and utilize His grace. He talks about how when he was younger he thought of grace as something you earn; like there was a minimum requirement of hard work and labor one has to reach and then receive an increase of grace. But that's not how gracorks at all. We don't meet God somewhere in the middle to gain divine assistance; he's always providing, and we don't need to qualify on some checklist to receive it. He said, "Instead of seeing Christ as making up the difference, I now see He makes all the difference." I thought that quote was amazing. I feel like I'm hard on myself a lot and get into the "minimum requirement" mindset pretty often. But I know if I can remember that it's not a difference that I need to make up, but rather Christ fully proffering to me a gift that I don't even need to qualify for, I can have a lot more peace of mind.
Well, the church is true, the work is awesome, and I'm having the time of my life out here. Thanks for reading/writing!
-Elder Metcalf
1) Elder Fox carrying a pie to District Meeting; this man is crazy about making food 2) Elder Fox and I snuggling on a table in the back of our WML's moving van 3) Another one 4) One of the young men in our ward, 김지태; he was baller enough to come with us to an appointment to meet a less active young man in the ward, love you bud
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