First week in DC

Here are some quotes from Elder Croft's email on March 9th.

"As for DC, well, I've got to say, it's been a tough first week, probably only because I think I came here expecting something a little different than what it's been. Good news though, I speak Spanish a lot!"

"...we had some cool finding experiences, we found a guy from a member reference, taught him the lesson, he said he believed it all, gave him a baptismal date, he accepted, and then we haven't seen or heard from him for the last 5 days, and we've tried multiple times... So yeah, we're not sure what's going on with that. We also found this cool family.... The mom has met with the missionaries before and read some of the Book of Mormon and they seem willing to listen, but again our return appointment fell through. Actually, we have yet to have a single return appointment go through. The past two days we have actually had no appointments which went through. So we've been trying to do a lot of finding, and we've found a couple of people, so hopefully they'll turn out well.

It's interesting though, the Spanish culture is different, because when you knock a door instead of just saying they're not interested they'll talk to you, and when you try to set up an appointment or come in to talk to them they just tell you to come back and knock some other time and they'll talk to you again. So we'll follow up on them once until they deny us again. But yeah, so far little success in the sense of numbers or lessons. I've actually only taught maybe three times?

Let's see, haha it's funny being back where I have to cook for myself sometimes, especially since I didn't really have time to go shopping last week, so this week I had pb&j and quesadillas, except when the members fed us. The members are really nice though..."

"... a funny story. We were out trying to contact this one lady, whose husband showed interest when we passed by before, so we headed out, and it was pouring rain, hard hard rain, but we biked to her house probably like a 10-15 minute ride, and she denied us at the door... So we prayed to know what to do next, and decided to go visit some references back near our apartment, unfortunately, at that point Elder Shinost discovered his tire had gone flat... So we walked back home in the rain, it was like a half hour walk, but we had good attitudes, so it wasn't too bad, we were looking for the reason why we were walking, and we found it! We ran into a guy..., we were passing him on a hill we would've normally flown down if we were on bikes, and we talked to him for a bit, turns out he's an alcoholic, and he's looking for help. He really wants to stop, his life has been kind of messed up because of it, and I think he stopped and talked with us just because he was looking for anyone that could help pull him out. It was cool to see how God was aware of him and sent us around because he knew we could help him. However, he works everyday but Sunday, so we're going to pass by this Sunday and we'll see what happens. I'm praying! That's the other thing here, people work all the time, which is good, but it definitely makes it hard to meet with them..."

"Other news about our area, it actually reminds me a lot of Taiwan! There are so many apartment buildings, and so many people! It's crazy because you can't talk to everyone, there are just too many, so you kind of have to pick and choose, and then just make sure people see you, and see you happy, so maybe they'll remember those missionaries. It also kind of smells like Taiawan, probably the cigarette smoke, but it's been good. My eyes have been opened so much more to how much people need the gospel."

"Um, today we were in D.C. as well, which was cool, stopped by a few of the monuments and then played soccer. It was super cold though, I would've preferred some museums, but it was still fun!"