Dear family and friends,
This past week was unusually slow. We had four investigators with baptismal dates, now we only have one, for March 3rd. I'm not going to complain or vent as I've done in the past I'm just here to report the facts. Elder Adona and I think this week is meant to be a humbling week. We've had a lot of success until recently and I think it's gone to my head so Heavenly Father's giving me a wake up call. There's a scripture that comes to mind that I just recently read during my personal study.
Helaman 12:3: "And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him."
I felt this hit me pretty hard and a light bulb went of in my head. People are lazy and forgetful and we're quick to cry unto the Lord when we're hurting but when the pain is over we quickly forget about it and move on to our old ways. There's no lasting change. The purpose of trials and afflictions can strengthen us, if we let it. Trials frequently require us to put the important things in perspective and require us to give up whatever we need to give up. However if we have a hardened heart we'll just go back to our old ways once the trial has passed. That leads us to verse 4:
"O how foolish, and how vain, and how evil, and devilish, and how quick to do iniquity, and how slow to do good, are the children of men; yea, how quick to hearken unto the words of the evil one, and to set their hearts upon the vain things of the world!"
So like I said right now things are going pretty slow. Our biggest struggle right now is finding people to teach. That's been a struggle for me my entire mission usually because there's no golden bullet to finding. Every finding method has a flaw to it and generally speaking all the solid investigators I've found usually come when I don't expect it. We're praying hard right now and I know it's a matter of "when" not "if" we get new investigators. The important thing that I've learned while I've been with Elder Adona is that YOU NEVER GIVE UP and you always have just a little hope left for people, even if they flake out on you 500 times.
This week I've been in a major smoothie phase and I've learned how to make some good smoothies too. The zone leaders (a.k.a the other missionaries that I live with) coined the phrase a few weeks ago "smooth as a boothe" and now they even mentioned "smoothie boothie". I laugh because it's all in good fun.
So have you ever thought about or wondered what we do in our spare time when we're bored? I bet most of you have a good idea since you've been on missions yourselves but if not here's a few things we do. We had an appointment earlier today with Henry (speaking of which he gave me a fancy Charles Raymond watch when we were last over. It was really nice.) that cancelled and while we were waiting for the bus Elder Adona and I talked about what the world would be like if everybody lived the word of wisdom. Well Elder Adona had an investigator back in his last area who smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day. Elder Adona said he calculated that that man spent $55,000 on cigarettes his entire life. So we asked ourselves what if half of the people in the United States smoked and those people spent that much money on cigarettes. We roughly estimated that there were 12 million people so half of that would be about 6 million people. So:
6,000,000 x 55,000 = 3.3 x 10 to the eleventh power. Basically two threes with eleven zeros. That's A TON of money! And that's assuming that everyone who smokes smokes that much. I'm sure the number's bigger but you get the point. Heber J. Grant did say that if the entire world lived the word of wisdom there would be no poverty or debt.
Anyway I love you all,
Elder Boothe
P.S. I said earlier that I didn't live in a ghetto. This is not true. I have been corrected by the other missionaries that I live with. I live in a true bona fide ghetto. There is A LOT of weed here. Haven't heard any gun shots though, thank goodness.
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