Week 73 - Apples to Apples: Bible Edition
Heyyyy it's me again!
It's been another good couple of weeks! We had a cold snap, and it was too cold to do stuff outside for most of the week, but we still had some good lessons and what not! We also shoveled a fair bit of snow on the couple of days that we could go out. It's not super fun shoveling snow in minus 30, but it's not the worst lol.
What was the worst, was what happened with Jayden. Backtrack to a couple months ago, Jayden's parents texted us saying that life was too busy and hectic for them to be involved with us. They said, over text, that “[Jayden] can reach out to you on his own if he wants.” But they didn't want us using their house to meet or texting them about it. This did pose a little bit of a challenge as Jayden does not have a phone, but we made it work and met up in public places like local cafes. Jayden has actually grown a lot, improved his behavior quite a bit, and wanted to be baptized! Well, last week we got a text from Jayden's dad expressing disappointment with Jayden for “sneaking out” to meet with us. This was quite confusing, as we were under the impression that it was ok for him to meet with us. We decided to bake a plate of cookies and stop by their house so we could talk to them directly to clear the confusion. However, when we drove over and saw no cars in the driveway, we figured they weren't home, and we'd try another day. 30 minutes later, we got a very hostile text from his mom asking if we were at their house trying to talk to Jayden while they (his parents) weren't home. I have so many questions about this one. How did they know we stopped by if they weren't home? How were we supposed to know if they were home or not? Why is that their first assumption for why we'd be on their street? It makes no sense. We responded just saying that no, we just wanted to bring some cookies that we baked, and we didn't see any cars in the driveway so we figured we'd try another day. After that we got a super long text rambling about “I can't believe you've been meeting with him behind our backs… we told you we didn't want you meeting with him… if you try to meet with him again we'll report you to the church…” etc. Even though that's complete bs, we responded very apologetically. We explained how we interpreted their previous texts, had no malintent, and we apologized if there was any miscommunication or misunderstanding. We said we'd love to keep helping Jayden if she'd allow us, but we'd never intentionally do so without her permission. She hasn't responded.
So, I guess we can't meet with Jayden anymore. It's really unfortunate as Jayden really enjoyed learning about the gospel. He's even been reading the Book of Mormon on his own and TAKING NOTES. When we first met Jayden, his dad said Jayden was a lost cause. There was no helping Jayden, and he himself had given up. For 2 months I never heard him say a single good thing about Jayden. Not once. 2 weeks after Jayden started reading the Book of Mormon on his own, his dad says for the first time that Jayden has actually seen some improvement. That was the first time I've ever heard him say something good about Jayden. Then a week later, they find out why, and they're angry about it? So dumb. Regardless, we’ve done all we can. His mom’s claims of telling us not to meet with him previously are completely false, and we have text log evidence of that, but she has made it very clear now. Since he’s only 15, we can't meet with him without his parent’s permission. Oh well! Jayden is a good kid, and I have faith he’ll continue to grow spiritually regardless of our help at this point. And maybe when he's 18 and can move out, he'll reach out to missionaries again and ask to be baptized.
Sorry about that rant! Let's get back to the Good news! Another thing we did this week was start editing a trailer for Elder Nielson's 100th Verse of the day! If you haven't noticed on Facebook, every day my trainee Elder Nielson posts a “Verse of the Day” video. It's been super fun and the quality of these daily reels have improved significantly! I even made up a little intro jingle on the guitar, and one of the other missionaries, Sister Feld, drew an intro title screen! Elder Nielson is planning to have the 100th verse of the day be a big livestream rather than the normal 1-minute reel. In preparation for that, we started editing a trailer for it! I guess really, I started editing it, but Elder Nielson has a lot of the cool ideas involving it. He tells me what to make, and then I make it.
Oh, and today we’re going bowling with our district! I'll finish writing this email later this evening so that I can include how that goes.
Update: we didn't go bowling after all. All the bowling places were closed. However, we did play Apples to Apples: Bible Edition and it was absolutely hilarious! Elder Nielson found it while we were volunteering at the thrift store, and it's for sure the best thrift store find yet.
That's all for now! It's a great day to be a missionary 😁.
-Elder Hays