Challenges and joys of missionary work

Hey everyone,

Before I forget, I wanted to tell you this cool thing that happened last week but I forgot to write about it last time. Elder Hasbiullin and I were contacting, in kind of a different part of town tha we hadn't been in before and we were talking to a lady on a bus stop. A bus pulled up and a bunch of people got on. The last lady to get on was wearing a big fur coat. As she was stepping on to the bus, some guy came up behind her and kind of grabbed her and reached in her pocket and grabbed her cell phone. I saw the whole thing, and then the guy started calmly walking away probably trying to blend in with the crowd. I didn't know what to do but I kind of stepped in front of him and just said, Hey! I think it scared him and he stopped and looked at me, just then the lady got off the bus and ran up and grabbed him and started yelling at him to give back the phone. There wasn't much he could do so he just gave her the phone. She called him some names and then got back on the bus. The guy walked away and was kind of just standing in the shadows. We finished our conversation pretty quick and the guy was yelling for me to come talk to him. Of course I wasn't going to go talk to him, so I just started walking away. Elder Hasbiullin seemed to be a bit more spooked than I was and was trying to get out pretty fast so he had already gotten about 10 or 15 feet away from me. As I was walking away, some guy grabbed my arm. I immediately just tried to rip my arm away but he held on. He said, that guy wants to talk to you. I just calmly said, I don't need to talk to that guy. And he kind of just looked at me and let me go. We got out pretty quick, jumped on a different bus and just left. I'm not sure if the second guy was like a partner or something to the bandit, or if he really just thought that guy wanted to talk to me and thought that I didn't hear him. I didn't want to stick around to find out of course, so we just got out. It was pretty cool, I kind of saved a lady from getting her cell phone stolen! The sad thing about it is that about 25 other people saw the whol thing and nobody said a word or did anything. I know if that would have happened in America, at least in Soda Springs, people would have stopped the thief. I don't like the fact that most people here have kind of a look out for number one attitude. That kind of attitude doesn't help anyone, and if an entire city or country has that attitude, you see that they don't progress very fast at all. Anyway, kind of a cool experience.

Last week we went to a really big aquarium for our p-day activity. It was pretty fun. Then we all went to eat at a mall, we had some KFC! My week went by really fast, although we had some tough days. We lost a few of our investigators and one of our members left town for a month. I as pretty frustrated at first about losing our investigators, but then I realized that they just weren't the ones we should be spending our time with. I know that God's hand is in this work so we don't have to worry when things like that happen. We still have Venera, although she was busy all this week. It is easy to forget that we have only been here for a month, and that it will be like this for a while longer. We didn't really know what we signed up for when we got asked to open up this city, but we should have been more prepared for how difficult it is. Remembering that we are still so new here, and that this is God's work, really helped me pick up my spirits and have a good rest of the week. It went by so fast, I feel like just yesterday we were here writing home.

We had a little miracle a couple days ago. We had no lessons and were getting ready to contact all day long. We went out right after studies and contacted for about an hour and a half. We talked to a girl on the street and asked if she would be interested in practicing English. She said she wasn't but said she had a friend who worked in a nearby furniture store who would be interested. I'm sure she just said it to get us to leave and never thought that we would be persistent enough to actually go find the store and talk with the lady. She obviously doesn't know mormon missionaries! Side note, I realize that we are annoying as missionaries but it really sunk in a few nights ago when one of our contacts said that he would be out of town for about a month, also probably just to get us to forget about him and stop calling, but my companion without skipping a beat, opened his planner to exactly a month from that day and wrote himself a reminder to call that guy, ha, how is that for not giving up, ha. Anyway, of course we found the furniture store and walked in and started talking to the lady working there. She is about 29 years old and was just happy as can be that two people would come up to her and offer free English practice. She has just been studying on her own for about a year and has just wanted practice. We were able to talk with her for about 40 minutes, explain who we are and what we believe, and why we left all our life at home for two years to come here. She is Muslim, but had no problem listening and asking questions about our faith. We have another meeting set up with her for Saturday, so we will be able to start helping her with English and teach her the gospel. We'll see if she accepts. It was just a really nice little break from contacting and was just enough to get us through that long day. It was cool.

Yesterday was the warmest day so far this year. It was so nice. Today is supposed to be even better, we are going to go play basketball at a nearby school. I'm excited to get out and get some exercise, other than walking up and down flights of stairs. I'm so out of shape! Oh ya, and I cut off all my hair. There was a hair cutter here that was left over from the seniour couple and I got the chance to be the test driver. It only had two guards so I figured the bigger one should do the trick. Only after I finished did I realize that I could have actually extended the guard to make it four times longer than what I used. Oops. Oh well, I figure this will be the haircut I wear for the rest of my life anyway, might as well start getting used to it now. 2 years, lots of stress, bad diet, constantly being tired, a sure fire recipe for baldness :) I don't mind, I figure I have an unusually round head, obviously I was prepared from the foundations of this world to be bald. Who can complain about that? If you aren't with God, you are against him, I can't say I like the fact that my hair fell out but what can you do?

Church was really nice on Sunday, although it was just the four elders, the Maxwells and one member. The other two members were out of town and we couldn't get any investigators to come. We also got to watch three sessions of General Conference at the Maxwell's house. We saw Priesthood and the two Sunday sessions. Priesthood was awesome, and so were the other two. I can't wait to see or read the Saturday sessions and re read all the others. This was a very good conference from what I can tell. That's probably why the week went by so fast. I love conference. That's way cool that they will build a temple in Meridian. I wonder how long it will take?

So it turns out I have no idea when Easter is. I always thought it was the first Sunday in April, boy was I wrong. Also, I don't know when Mothers day is, I have a feeling it is the second Sunday in May since last year we called home on the 9th of May. If that's true, it's coming up quick. Only a month until I get to call home for the last time. Crazy. Then after Mothers day, a few weeks later will be my 21st birthday! It's like 19 and 20 didn't really exist. 21 is a big deal it seems like. Don't send me anything though. Take whatever money you would have used to send a package and either just get me something for when I get home or just put a few dollars on my card and we'll go get some lunch somewhere. It's not worth trying to get me a package. Every time the AP's or President come, they have lots of stuff to bring anyway so it's hard for them to bring extra things. It's not a big deal, holidays on the mission are just like any other day. Maybe you can make me a cake when I get home!

That's cool that dad got to go to a mission reunion. I hope my mission keeps up with those things, we have such a great group of people, I would really like to keep in touch with them. I bet that was interesting to see some of those people 34 years later. That's too bad that not everyone stays faithful after a mission. The good thing is that we know what to do to prevent it. Follow the counsil of the prophet and everything will go fine. By the way, how is Dillon doing on his mission? I forgot where he is, South America, or Mexico? Tell everyone from that side of the family hello for me.

Well this turned out to be a pretty long letter. Thanks for the letters and the support. I hope everyone has a great week. Love you guys!

Elder Geddes