Today is p-day. I am doing laundry right now, had to get here at 5:30 to get a spot on a computer. I leave the mtc next wednesday morning, I am supposed to be at the travel desk with my luggage at 3am. I have been here for a week now but it feels much longer than that. All the Elders in my district are starting to go crazy. We do a LOT of role playing here. Our investigators are mostly the other members of our district just making up a character that they play for 2-10 min while we practice a certain commitment or fundamental on them. There are also a few longer teaching opportunities to teach our teachers for 20-45 min. They are playing people that they taught on their missions. These are good and frustrating experiences. The worst thing is when you can see that they understand the principle and feel that it is right through the spirit but just refuse to change. There is a shifting moment when suddenly they take up the defensive and start building walls between you and them. The discussion is not a total loss if you play the end right but getting any serious progress sorta goes out the window and you find yourself fighting to keep them from looking back on other principles and applying that attitude to them as well. Some of the investigators have been very well versed in the bible. It is difficult to keep up with what they share because they will sometimes just mention the verse and chapter without reminding me what is in it, that is when I sorta shift into my ever favorite fake it til you make it mode. I was able to keep up with one of these investigators named mark the other day. He would do a lot of the talking in the lesson because he gave very long answers to questions but that was ok as a missionary because he was engaged and it takes some of the pressure off of us to have something to say. We got to talking about the apostasy (me and my companion were trying to make our way to joesph smith and the restoration from the bible) and I mentioned truths were lost and that now we have the fullness of the gospel. He was confused by this and asked a few questions about it. He brought up william tindale and my companion gave me a who on earth is that look. I knew who he was because fall semester I had watched a documentary called fires of faith the coming forth of the king james bible for fun one week, and everyone thought it was a strange thing to do? well glad I did now. The problem that I ran into with mark was that I could answer most of his questions but I couldn't get him to feel the spirit of what I was teaching him. Without that nobody will be converted and if they are it won't last. So it is p-day so now I get to talk about all the random stuff too or at least that is how I see it right now. The food here is decent, I have not had to cook anything myself. That walmart watch the band broke on like day two I think it was so now I just have my companion keeping track of time. He is also more interested in looking at his planner throughout the day so I just ask him where we need to be. Did our first stuff as zone leaders last night. We welcomed in two new districts that we are in over. We are now over about thirty people but we have not had to do much yet. Last night we just talked to them about the rules and companions and stuff. I think Elder Hook sorta scared them.. we hit monday this week and things started getting more unpleasant. I think it was an investigtor named john that really sorta messed up the groove that we had had going up until then. It was the first and really only time they had us "tracting" with really no help on door approach which is a large point of concern for a lot of us in the district. Anyway john was not the most polite person he just asked us why like seven times, and then shut the door. We tried again(as if we had not just done it). Second time we got in but we got like three whys and he told me I was a board.
They talk a lot about loving the people and teaching people not lessons and finding the needs of the people through the spirit but we both didnt want to talk to john right then. It was a good lesson to learn but it sorta fried our patience with the role plays. We started noticing that we will do the same role play like three times in a row just adding a little bit each time. For example try and commit someone to church then try and commit someone to church and they say no then try and commit someone to church they say no and you find that they have a concern about a particular thing and so you try to resolve that concern and reextend the commitment. It just naturally turns out that we do the last one on the first time and so then we are just redoing things. Two weeks seemed a really short amount of time to be here when I got here but I am ready to go on wednesday.
Elder Robert Wesley Rogers
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