Near our apartment there's a gas station that plays 80s music all day long. I'm pretty sure it's one of my favorite things about serving here. I always slow down and listen really hard when we ride by it. Sometimes if I'm lucky I'll get a song by the Talking Heads or the Cure.
Well, another week has gone by. We haven't been having a whole lot of success recently. We've had to drop a lot of lame people who weren't actually interested in our message but for some reason still kept having us over. We've also lost contact with some people we thought were cool but who seem to have just disappeared. It hasn't been a whole lot of fun. Still, we have faith that the Lord will bless us with some better people now that we won't be wasting as much time with the people who weren't interested or impossible to contact.
The homeless guy I told you about in my last email now has a baptismal date. The sister missionaries are pretty excited for him. They were having a rough time and now they finally have someone who is progressing. It makes me feel good to see him at Church with the family who took him in. I'm glad I was able to help him out that day.
We've recently found several people who want to get baptized but aren't married. That's tough. It's a mom and her daughter who both already have testimonies but need to get married to their boyfriends first. The only problem is that there's a lot of men in our area who fear commitment like the plague. They'll live with someone for 20 years and have five kids with them and will still be unsure if that's the person they really want to spend the rest of their life with. So, we'll see how that goes.
I'm trying to be more friendly when I talk to people. It's really easy when you're a missionary to get too serious. No one wants to invite two grumpy 20 year olds over to talk to them about how their lives are not complete. I'm trying to strike a good balance between being friendly and genuine but also being up front about who we are and what we do. One of these days I hope to find it.
It was freezing here on Friday. It rained for a couple of hours and it was below 60 for most, if not all, of the day. The warm weather has been spoiling me.
Today for P-day we went to Ross. I bought new pants because I tore some of my other ones on my bike, as well as two skinny ties. As a missionary, ties and watches are basically your only areas where you control your style.
Right now in the Book of Mormon I just read the books of Jarom and Omni. For some reason I really like those books. When Terryl Givens came to BYU, he talked about how those books actively prevent mythologizing The Book of Mormon. Because the line of succession from writer to writer is unbroken, you either have to accept the book as a whole or leave it. The Bible doesn't have that, so people often treat parts of it more as myth than as history. The Book of Mormon does not allow you to diminish its significance. Mormonism does not respond well to the watered-down, feel-good treatment religion often undergoes in modern society.
I'm sending some pictures of my new clothes. Also of my Phoenix missionary tan line. You can't see my neck tan line in that picture, but it's a sight to behold as well. I decided to do one of the pictures in the bathroom mirror as a tribute to 2006 Myspace.
P.S. Spanish Culture Fact: In the state directly south of Arizona, Sonora, they make a special kind of hot dog. Sonoran hot dogs are an improvement on the American version because they're wrapped in bacon. Then they add chiles and ketchup and mustard and onions and all that fun stuff. My challenge to those of you at home is to make Sonoran hot dogs, if you think your arteries can take it. Don't forget to use toothpicks to hold the bacon on the hot dogs while they cook.
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