This week has been pretty crazy with interviews with President Cusick, Tampa metro, car getting towed, and transfer calls. Let's just say that I am a little happy that it is all over now. After preparation day ended last week, we spent the rest of the evening stuck inside because of the rain/thunderstorm all night. It would have done no good to go out in the rain trying to find people to teach because no one else would be out, and it's not worth getting sick over. So we just tried to set solid appointments for the rest of the week.
Tuesday is when we had interviews with President Cusick. I know that Elder Hicken told him that I had been here forever, and President Cusick told him that forever would be my entire mission. President Cusick also mentioned to both him and I that the minimum amount of time that President Monson wants a missionary in one area is eight months. and I have only been here for seven months so far. Later on in the evening, we had lessons set with some investigators, and we were going to be on splits with members coming out with us. We thought that we had a really good evening planned to get some member present lessons. When we showed up to the investigators homes, they weren't home and wouldn't answer their phones, so we then helped the members with their home teaching lists and were able to get in with a really sweet older lady. I was with the 2nd Counselor (who just got called to this position a month ago), and he told me that he is moving out of the ward in a month. It seems like everyone is always moving out of the ward boundaries here. It also makes me wonder who they are going to call to be the next counselor, because all of the active high priests already have big responsibilities that they have to deal with.
Wednesday we did some more Facebook finding with sending messages to members. I love the youth in the ward, because they don't have any fear for sharing the gospel and are always giving us names of people that we can talk to. We also had another lesson with the Innes family and watched "The First Great Commandment" by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. They are excited for General conference to come around this week!
After weekly planning on Thursday, we found some more potential investigators. We had a less active member give us a referral of one of his neighbors last week. I don't know what to think of this guy, and he was just joking around when he told us to go and visit them. We didn't want to ask ourselves, 'What if?" by not even trying, so we stopped by and showed them the Because of Him video on the front door step and talked about baptism. They are very active Catholics, but they loved the message and said that we could come back again. They also want to come to church to see what it is like to check it out. I learned from this experience that I need to make sure to visit every single referral that we do get, even if we don't think that it is that solid. You never know if they will accept your message about Jesus Christ until you try, and who are we to hold them back from that opportunity. We traveled up to Tampa for Metro, and first thing we did when we arrived is head straight into the city for street contacting all night. We did get rained on pretty hard and got back to the apartment soaking wet. We followed the AP's in to park our cars in the back of the parking lot where they told us that the visitors parking was, then we went in for the evening.
Friday was spent street contacting eleven hours straight walking around in Downtown Tampa. The goal that we set for ourselves was to have 63 baptism invitations and 11 return appointments by the end of the day. We were right on track until another big rain storm came through the city. We couldn't do anything besides take cover for about an hour or two. During those eleven hours, we did exceed our goal of asking people if they would be baptized. We counted only those we had good conversations back and forth with. We only got seven return appointments with people. It just goes to show how ineffective that street contacting really is. It's tough trying to get people's information so that you can go and visit with them again.
After we finished studies in the morning, we packed our bags and headed out the door. Only then to realize that where we had parked the cars wasn't visitor parking, and that the two cars had been towed. We parked where the AP's had told us to, and it didn't say resident or reserved on the parking space. We found out that the visitors parking had white writing on the pavement, but with how dark it was and how hard the rain was coming down, you couldn't see anything. We had to wait a few hours for Elder Jepson, who is the vehicle coordinator, to come and pick us up to go and get the cars. He told us that this was the 8th or 9th time that it has happened to missionaries cars when they come up to Metro. The mission paid for the first few cars to get them out, but they were tired of having to keep paying for them so it came out of our own pocket. So six hours and $220 later we got the car back. it was quite the ordeal that I never want to deal with again. It put a damper on the rest of the day.
Sunday morning we got our transfer email. We found out that both Sisters in our ward are being pulled out. This doesn't surprise me too much because President Cusick told me in my interview that this ward can't support two sets of missionaries right now. I kind of saw this coming when they got their car taken away a few weeks ago. So Elder Hicken is staying here in the University Park ward, and I am getting transferred to a new area. I know that he is super thrilled about this and can't wait for his new companion. I too, must say that I am ready for a change. I won't find out where I will be at next until Thursday at Transfer meeting. Who knows? With how long I have been in these past two areas, this next area could possible be my last area of my mission. I guess we'll have to wait and see about that. So I didn't get to say bye to too many people at church today because we left early with a member to go and give a blessing. But it was well worth it. We had a super fun FHE with the Parisi family. I love them so much and I am going to miss them. We did a High and Low game during diner, and everyone's high was that we came over for dinner, and the low was that I was leaving. They really are a lot of fun to be around. We had a great lesson talking about missionary work and general conference. They have quite a few people that they want to share the Gospel with and invite them to meet with us. We also watched a bunch of Mormon Message videos and had some great dinner and dessert.
So that was my week. This week is also going to be crazy busy with saying bye to people and going into a new area where I don't know a single person there. It will be lot's of fun.
Love,
Elder Leavitt
"Ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope and a love of God and of all men" -2 Nephi 31:20
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