Doritos Locos tacos, Shamrock Shakes, and WoW (Word of Wisdom, not World of Warcraft) issues

Hello  (<---  because you have to start somewhere... [hopefully you M. Birbiglia fans get that reference])

HOLY GOODNESS!!!  I had no idea that Erwin was that crazy on justice!  Remind me not to go tracting there... (it's out of my area anyway)

Nobody we left our number with and dropped last week has called, so teaching pool = clean.

I had the Doritos Locos Tacos like twice this week.  It was delish.  Yeah, Fawn, I totally wear my Doritos Locos Tacos T-Shirt ALL THE TIME.  It's so awesome and really invites a special spirit while I preach gospel truth.  (This paragraph is DRENCHED in sarcasm if you hadn't noticed).
But we went to Taco Bell with the sister missionaries and one of them is lactose intolerant.  She asked for no cheese on her 5-layer burrito.  You guessed it.  There was cheese.  She took it back and got it fixed though.  Oh but wait, there was still cheese on the new one.  She just ate it.  The lesson here is, don't count on other people to fix their mistakes even when you tell them what their mistakes are because you're still going to end up in the bathroom for the rest of the evening.  Or something like that....

Well, nobody is willing to change their views right when they meet us, but that guy on campus was just not even willing to hear what our views were.  He just disagreed, and he didn't even know what he was disagreeing with.  I was in the hospital this week minding my own business when this man walked up to me (You're thinking, awesome! A guy that recognizes you has the lighthouse beacon of truth that you are!  Nope, he wanted to pick a fight.  I could tell.) and basically asked me a series of questions that led me to admit that the bible was authored by the Spirit of God, and then he's like, so why did you write another book?  I just had to ask him if he thought the Spirit of God could only write one book and he was like, "We'll we can stand here and argue all day and it will do no good."  and he walked away.  I was like, "You totally came to pick a fight and then just walked away!?  How embarrassing..."  Ugh, I do get soooo upset, but I'm pretty good at keeping cool.  For example, A member came up to us yesterday and asked us to help her respond to a person's aggressive questions that she had been receiving on Facebook.  We went to her place and she read us the questions and my comp. was ready to throw down and get into it with the scriptures, and I was like "Do you have a copy of Preach My Gospel?  Let's check out Ch. 5."  In ch. 5 there's a section called  "Use the Book of Mormon to respond to objections"  and in there we learn that ANY question or concern that anyone has about our faith relates to the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. We HAVE to help everyone see that their REAL question whenever they have concerns about "spirit babies" or "becoming gods" is  "Is the Book of Mormon true holy scripture and was Joseph Smith a true prophet of God?"  That's it.  That's the basis of our testimony of the restoration.  All of the other doctrine rests on the divinity of the BofM and Joseph Smith being called of God.  So, anytime someone asks a question about our faith, if they sincerely want to know the answer, answer it and then help them see that it all depends on the BofM and J.S.  If you can tell that they don't really want to learn, they're just attacking you with questions, tell them that their questions indicate that they might not actually be familiar with what the Book of Mormon really is and who Joseph Smith was and invite them to learn more.  That's the best thing to do.  My comp. then put his scriptures away and bore testimony.  'nuff said.  No one can refute a sincere heartfelt personal testimony of the restored gospel.

The keyboard is great!  I've mastered Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  This week will hold some new challenges, but it will be worth it once I'm a virtuoso.

Okay, so the story about sister W. (name abbreviated for anonymity) is the most Inspirational/Despairing story that happened last week.  Basically, she called and had us come over and I decided we weren't being assertive enough on her WoW (not warcraft!  she's not a deacon...) issues and so we got into it and I told her to read and pray daily and she'll have the strength to live the word of wisdom and I left her a reading assignment.  She called the next morning and basically told me that she had a 3 a.m. revelation after reading my scripture assignment and she was going to humble herself and make it happen!  We'll this happened for like three more days afterward, leaving assignments and calling me in the morning.  Each day, I was trying to help her see that in order to show that she was really committed, she was going to have to remove the cigarettes from her home and she wouldn't do it.  So like the fourth day this happened, she BLEW up on us and I could literally hear the voice of Satan coming out of her mouth in a fit of anger.  But she gave us the cigs.  So then I took out her trash.  And the cigarettes too.   So that was quite the experience.  As you can see though, she wasn't that sincere and so, things aren't going well on that front anymore.

Okay, so there's this restaurant franchise out here called Krystal Burgers and I seriously don't know how they're in business.  I've only heard of people that like their food.  They're legendary, everyone else, HATES it.  Apparently, they steam cook their burgers and they're awful.  I haven't been yet, but you know I will.  I'll let you know how it goes  ;)

This paragraph is specifically for Mr. and Mrs. Mitch Hayashi who have yet to send me and semblance of correspondence despite repeated promises of writing me every Sunday. Tag them in this on Facebook if you can.  Ashley, it's march.  Which means SHAMROCK SHAKES!!!!  I'm going to get one this year, but if you don't write me, I'm also going to hire someone to buy a shamrock shake and throw it in your face.  I just miss you and Mitch so much and shamrock shake advertisements reminded me of that a few days ago.  But yeah, if it hadn't been for those ads... I probably would have kept on forgetting about you two.

Well this week, the stars aligned and I was feeling confident, so when a hispanic lady (that only spoke Espanol) answered her door the other day, I just went for it and tried out my spanish door approach.  It was awful.  I totally butchered it. But because of the gift of tongues, we totally understood each other!  Especially when she said she was a Jehovah's Witness... we left.

General Conference is going to give you guys much better advice than I will, so count on watching that this weekend and don't listen to me very much.  Maybe I'll have some better experiences next time.  I love you all....... for the time being.

Elder Grabinger

P.S.  Congrats to Bro. Slade for shattering the previous record of "Longest Held Bishopric Calling In History."  Way to go, sport.

And We're Back!

Hey Everybody (Chloe tells me that EVERYBODY reads this, so whatever),


Yeah, I tried this week to basically only eat food that was given to us.  I didn't go hungry at all.  Seriously, I don't even need to buy groceries.  It's ridiculous how much food we are fed.  I love it.  I even had to reject food.  This is a blessed area.


Fawn, that's the perfect message for stake conference there.  I've been thinking about 2 Nephi 25:26 (I hope that's the right one) so much recently and it states so concisely how important it is to be that example for the younger generation.  We had ward conference yesterday and the stake president told a story about how he had to go make a personal appeal to a young man's parents so that he could go on a temple trip because the parents were like, "he has to do chores today."  Basically, if we want stronger youth, we NEED stronger parents.  That's the way to do it.


Ugh, we stopped by Kimmy/Wes/Leslie's place yesterday and I just left a note with our number and told them to call us.  We probs won't go back anymore unless they call.  Same deal with Zach and Brint.  They were home, but Brint went to do homework when we got there and Zach...well they're just not interested so we won't be going there anymore. Basically, we did a lot of cleanup yesterday.  Now I'm trying to build our teaching pool this week.  We've visited with members and shared a message about member missionary work.  I'm hoping to get some member referrals soon.  Seriously, that's the way to go.  P. Monson has said there is no substitute for a member oriented proselyting program. Tracting and all other forms of finding are awful compared to it.  All you have to do is ask people if they want to learn more.  Whenever someone asks you a question about the church this week, after answering it, just say something like "so, we have these guys whose job is to just teach people about our church, wanna come to my house [someday soon] and have a snack and learn more?" And if they say yes, call the missionaries and I swear they will drop whatever they have to come teach your friend.  THAT'S ALL IT TAKES AND YOU'LL BE THE MISSIONARY'S BEST FRIEND.  PLEASE JUST DO IT!!!  Ask someone this week if they would like to learn more.  That's it.  Thanks.


Excellent idea about LDS.ORG I will definitely remember that.  This man lives in the projects though, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what a computer is and I don't even think he's really accountable...so yeah.  We're not going to see him again either.  :\


HAVE I TRIED THE DORITOS LOCOS TACOS!?  Well no... but I have about a million coupons (which translates to about 5 in the metric system) to get some free ones.  Also, the area manager gave us the T-Shirt that the employees wear as their uniform.  it says, I <3 doritos locos tacos or something like that but the <3 is actually shaped like a dorito.  Pics to follow!!!


Oh wow Fawn, your week was crazy.  Dog sitting!? Knott's Berry Farm!? Barnes & Noble!?  That's the toughest.  You must be soooo pooped. Your life = harumph.


Madelynn... I miss her.  What a goof...


Okay, so the T-KNOX mission is Terrific/Horrific.  In Tennessee, you will see a dead possum in the road every day.  You can't avoid it. There's at least one.  Blood everywhere.  A few miles away from Johnson City is a town called Erwin (which is FULL of mormon haters because apparently, instead of worshipping God and Jesus every Sunday, every protestant church in the area just preaches against the LDS church all day er'rday) whose claim to fame is that they put a circus elephant on trial for murder and executed the capital punishment via hanging it with a crane.  I don't get to google it, but you guys can and let me know if that is indeed true.  Also, yesterday I saw a man. The man was in a golf cart.  The man was driving the golf cart on the sidewalk.  The man was holding a leash.  The man was walking his dog on while driving his golf cart on the sidewalk.  The man was easily 350 lbs.  Freaking Tennessee...


So we ran into this guy on the college campus who was also ministering, so we get to talking and he basically tells us we're not Christians.  We could not convince him otherwise.  Apparently we don't believe in the right Jesus Christ.  It's not enough to believe that he was the Eternal God born of the virgin Mary who performed miracles and atoned for the sins of the world.  I still don't know what he was saying about why we don't believe in the right Jesus, but I tried, which is more than he can say I'm sure.  Oh well.


Well, I kinda got into a spiritual message earlier, so I'll just add to that and we'll call it good for this week, mmk?  The MOST DIFFICULT ASPECT of missionary work, is FINDING PEOPLE TO TEACH.  Your ward can have the greatest teaching missionaries in the world, but if they have no one to teach... well you get the idea right?  YOU MUST involve yourself in finding people for them to teach.  All you have to do is ask ANYONE that shows ANY interest finding ANYTHING out about the church is INVITE THEM TO LEARN MORE.  Too often, we answer their questions and leave it at that.  It's no good.  Ask them to come over to your home and learn more (Tell them you'll have food).  If two random guys walk up to you and ask you if you want to learn more about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, honestly what would you say? Honestly?  If your friend or acquaintance says, "Hey, that was a good question, want to come over for cookies and milk Thursday afternoon and learn more about the LDS church," what might you say?  DO IT! Invite someone this week.  Don't be afraid.  2 Tim. 1:7  (I hope that's the right reference also...)


I'm hoping to make this week superb so I'll have some incredible success stories for you all next week.  Let me know about your successes too!


Wait, actually last night our appointment canceled so we had nothing to do (story of my weekend) so I got the message and I was like "Alright, Big Guy, I got it.  We're going to go find someone."  So we roll on over to the projects (cause even if those people aren't interested, they at least talk to us) and we knock on Vicki's door! Basically, I taught her the first discussion on her doorstep and introduced the Book of Mormon and she was like, "The Bible says... (at
this point in my mind, I'm like "Lady, if you refer to Revelations right now and say that nothing can be added to the Bible, I'm going to lose it) ...that the word of God cannot be contained in all the books of the world."  *pause*  "HALLELUHA!!! YES, YOU'RE RIGHT! AND THERE COULD EVEN BE MORE ANCIENT SCRIPTURE THAT MAN HASN'T DISCOVERED, WILL YOU READ AND PRAY ABOUT THE BOOK OF MORMON? oh I haven't any money... IT'S FREE! TAKE IT! HERE! yes. GIVE US YOUR PHONE NUMBER! WE'LL SEE YOU LATER!  byebye.  It was the best doorstep experience I've yet had.  Come to think of it, I haven't had any really bad ones though.  Maybe I'm overly optimistic and just don't see it when it's bad.


Anyway, I gotta jet.  We have another zone activity today!  Also, my keyboard came in. :)  I'll be a virtuoso soon enough.  Big shout out to Casio for that...  I love you all.  Do missionary work.  Invite someone this week.  It's fun.  I swear.


Kisses.


Elder Grabinger


P.S.  I'll send those pics when I can use a computer that lets me hook up my camera again.


P.S.S.  Fawn, do Mom and Dad have an extra automobile GPS that I can have?  No big deal if not.  I'll just buy one in April.  I don't pay for groceries...  But if they do have a good working one, let me know or just send it to me.  Also, forget about FedEx, you guys don't have to pay for it.  I'll UPS it soon.  BBye!