A New Approach

Hey everyone!

It has been a good week here in the beach town.

On Monday we had a good Pday. We went to the other area here in Tela
and hung out with the other missionaries over there. We wrote home,
ate pastelitos(empanadas), and played volleyball. We invited a few
young men to play against the 4 of us Elders. In the first game we
played for a 3 liter bottle of coke. We were playing good until the
end when we choked and lost the game. So we decided to play double or
nothing to try and even out. But we lost a second time....So we had to
buy the young men 6 liters of coke. Even though it only cost like 4
bucks in total it hurt. Thankfully the young men were kind enough to
share with us.

On Tuesday I went on divisions with Elder Ruiz in his area. Elder Ruiz
is from Mexico and has been out for about 4 months. Even though almost
all of the visits planned fell through I enjoyed being in their area
for the day. Elder Ruiz is a recent convert of about 2 years. He's
also the only member in his family. It was interesting to hear the
desire he has to be converted during his mission. Him being a new
convert means that he still has a lot to learn. All this and he is
training a new gringo with just 4 months in the mission. That is what
I love about the mission. It doesnt matter if I been 22 months in the
mission; I still find great examples and learn from others that have 4
months in the mission.

The rest of the week in my assigned area we did a lot of contacting
and visiting the less actives we are working with.

This week in contacting we took a new approach. Usually in contacting
we would try to be really shallow as far as doctrine goes until we
actually get into a formal teaching appointment. I guess we would be a
little scared to loose the contact if we introduced something foreign
to most people here like the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith. At the
beginning of the week that didnt seem to working to well for us. So
instead, we started being a little more bold with the people we talked
to. When I realized people werent interested with our first shallow
approach we would whip out the Book of Mormon and see if we could
strike some interest that way. Honestly using this approach did
receive some strange and sometimes offensive responses it did help us
have good and genuine conversations with people about the Restored
Gospel. I cant even say that we had more success in finding
investigators this way but I can say that we were able to share
important points of our message even if the people didnt choose to
investigate more. So instead of just asking the people to hear us out
and let us visit them, we were able to teach them and testify to them
before they can say no.

Anyways, this is getting lengthy. I am doing good. The work is going
little by little.

Love you all! Have a great week.

Elder Gessell