Called to Serve: Elder Spencer Shirley: Weeks of March 5 & 12

** I was out of town, so I didn't get his emails posted**

March 5:

cge so ya i didn't email last week tungod sa video call. my emails are probably going to get a lot worse now because of that but I'll still try to write at least a little bit. This past week we visited a ton of members and Elder Swain told goodbye to everyone because he "for sure" was going to transfer. hahaha jokes, after having a farewell party and everything, Elder Swain is staying in Zamboanguita. So ya I'm not training this transfer, probably next though. It's all good though, Elder Swain is a good companion so no complaints there.

Right now we're just really trying to get our people with baptismal dates to actually keep commitments. Mostly people just have a hard time finding a desire to actually start reading the book of mormon, or going to church, or whatever. Basta it's annoying. Just read the darn book. you'll get all the answers you'll ever need there. It seems so simple but it just doesn't connect with people. Hopefully we can start making progress though with them.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand ya I want to videocall now so this'll be all I write for now.

Yup,
Elder Shirley
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** This is a picture I emailed to Spencer. It's from the Rome Temple dedication. The photographer is from Deseret News and is a friend of Sharon's and took hers & my dad's wedding photos (Jeff Allred)**

March 12:

but dang that's cool, I kinda forgot that they were building a temple in Rome... But ya dang that's awesome.

This past week was kinda interesting. Elder Swain and I just decided we were going to try contacting any potential person or referral all on one day.... Ya it didn't work out, got punted from everything. BUT the next day we did manage to contact a referral and we started teaching this young couple and a member's niece. They were pretty receptive and open to listening so hopefully that'll work out.

We also found this Less Active that we had been trying to contact for some time and when we first walked up he just kept saying "I'm catholic, ya I went to your church before, but I'm catholic again." and ya he was boarder-line just yelling at us so we just kinda stood there kay the only thing we had even said up to this point was "maayong gabii" (good evening) which some how triggered this long rant. But ya we basically just told the guy like "hey listen, we just want to help you out, we're not going to force you to sit down and listen to us or anything. We just wanted to see if there was anything we could do to help out." Which then triggered another rant about how life is really hard but ya loooong story short, we were actually joking around with the guy by the end of it. So ya never doubt how meaningful it is to show your care for others, even if all you do is offer to help in one way or another. It helps a whole lot more than you'd think. But siempre there's other stuff that happened this past week but that was probably my favorite part of the week.

Love ya!
Elder Shirley