Tracting, Teaching and more dogs...

It has rained a ton lately and I guess has been a very wet year for Arkansas already. (which is good because of the drought last year) We did a lot of tracting which is always a joy. We had a lot of success at Apartment complexes. At one house in particular we knocked and some guys opened it and said, "Yo the christians are at the door."....then a guy in the back yells, "Hey no mormons allowed!" So then we left ha. It's always fun meeting new people, most of the time I just try to strike up a small conversation so that we don't scare them by throwing a Book of Mormon in their face and telling them to read it. I told the Elder's Quorum and High Priest's to use us hometeaching and so yesterday we went hometeaching! It was a lot of fun, visiting members. The two brothers we went with are very funny too. One of them has a neat story. He has only been a member for two years and before that he was a baptist. He has a super strong accent and told us how missionaries just tracted into him and he let them in and they "got to talkin'" and even though his granny said they "was all devil worshippers and satanists" he said at one time he would go to the Baptist church in the mornings and then go to the LDS church in the afternoon. He quit smoking and drinking and a week after being baptized "found himself a wife while walking down the halls of the church!"  He said at first his family was real hesitant and scared for him but now they really like the church now that they know more about it. The other guy who came with us is the Gospel Doctrine teacher and he is so good at teaching. He is very funny and he has the whole class laughing and having fun, just a real nice humble guy with a good sense of humor. One investigator we found is nice and I feel has great potential so we are excited. She has a bunch of dogs, they are chihuahua's and very yappy and one is pregnant and she said they they usually have 5-9 puppies in a litter and I was like "What? Seriously outta that dog?" I was just really shocked that chihuahuas can have that many, must be the size of gumballs or something sheesh. We also (funny story) tracted into this guy who was in his garage working on making a chicken house and he had a punch colored drink and I'm like "Hey what'ya drinkin' there?" and he says, "Oh that's a mix of vodka and cranberry juice, you know we Catholics get started early." he then showed us the tree house he made for his kids and it was so cool!  a mechanical engineer and built a three story tree house! It was really cool. He also has the cutest dog. A Bull Mastiff, they are like giant Pugs, seriously they are. And the dog put his paws on my arm and they are giant and he sniffed my face and it's rather intimidating, it's like a bear sniffing your face or something haha. Definitely going back to see him again.  Also the Bishop of our Ward's son got his mission call and opened it up yesterday and he's going to the Terisina, Brazil Mission. I told him we'd take him tracting a bunch before he leaves so that he can experience what it's like to be rejected before he heads down to a high baptizing mission like Brazil haha. I just finished Miracle of Forgiveness and wow! So good! President Kimball really gives sin a nice kick to the pants. It teaches you so much and really made me learn what repentance is all about.

Well, until next time.

Elder Blackburn