"ANOTHER WEEK"

Mon 7/19/10 8:41 AM
Hey family,
Still no baby.. it reminds me of waiting for my mission call! Well, it sounds like I'll hear about it next week then! That story about Megan was intense. Wow, poor little girl! I hope everything heals well without infection. (Megan put a fish hook through her lip)

This past week for us was pretty crazy as well. We only spent two of the days in our area, and the rest of the time was with other missionaries on exchanges. I got to go with Elder Stevens (the one I trained) on Tuesday! It happened to be his birthday too, so I spoiled him a little like a "dad" does, and bought him some gelado. He is working in Waukesha only 5 miles North of the Du Charmes house, so he's even closer to them than I am. They said something awhile ago about picking us up and taking us out to lunch sometime. Thursday, we went out to South Milwaukee and worked with the Spanish elders. The one I worked with, Elder Tolman, is scheming to get President to switch me to Spanish speaking. We are going home the same day, so we were thinking if that happened, our "dying" wish would be to serve together for our last transfer(s). So, that was a good day, and we found a group of people to teach by jumping in a 'ghetto ball' game with them and playing for a bit. Friday was zone conference, and there was a lot of changes that took place. President Jones brought out a new focus and things to emphasize from what he learned in the MTC trainings he had. We are doing a lot more roll playing now than ever. I kind of enjoy roll playing, but most of the other missionaries hate it. But yeah, alot of practice, evaluation, and re-practicing.

That night we were also on exchanges and stayed overnight in city area. And Saturday was pretty nuts. One of the craziest exchanges of my mission. (right next to my drunk Peter exchange). It was just one thing after another, and I don't even remember the order things happened. But one of the first things, we had the nicest young lady (20-22 or so) come up to Elder Hyte and me asking all these sincere questions. She is about to have her first baby, and she is about to get married and she knows she needs what we have. And she told us all this before we even really told her much of our message. Right when we were about to get her information and keep teaching her, this big, drunk, crack-head guy who just came up and grabbed our arms and said he needed help with whatever (people are always asking us for money). Raven, the nice girl, was still standing there waiting for us to teach her, but Satan sent this dude to get in the way, so we didn't get her information, but she does have our card so hopefully she'll call. We had a really good feeling about her. Then, after that we were kind of turned around (you know how I am with directions, and Elder Hyte is a brand new missionary), so we just kept walking and busing to where we thought was towards our next appointment. Through our journey we just kept teaching people one after another, it was a teach-a-thon. We found out we had done one big circle around the city, and we ended up back where we were at one time three hours later, and a guy who saw us the first time wondering, yelled to us the second time we happened to be there, and we taught him and he wants to learn more. Then when we were teaching a big group of very 'believing' black people, they wanted us to pray with them, so we held hands and prayed in a huge circle right outside with people passing by. Another drunk guy later called after us, and ran up to meet us, we were expecting him to ask for money too, but instead he told us that he was a member from Scottsdale and Queen Creek, and he served a mission in Brazil, and he was out here now way off the path. He warned us never to move to Milwaukee to live. Then, as we were heading home, we missed our bus that comes only every 25 minutes, so we decided to just start walking in the relative direction of home, and when we decided to stop walking and sit down at a bus stop, within 30 seconds, a car pulled over on the side of the road and a 'born again' Christian guy got out and walked across the street to condemn us. We just bore our testimonies that we do believe in Christ despite what he and his religion chose to believe. After he got a bit shifty and decided to "cast the devil out of us in the name of Christ". It was pretty blasphemous. We just looked at him after he did that, and asked him if we could do anything for him to help him out. He just walked back to his car saying, "I won't say 'God speed' but I will say good-bye". Haha, we just looked at each other and said, "That was weird."

So, there's my story for this week!

Love you,

Elder Vogan