June 10, 2013

I'm Not the President, But I Can Make a Basketball Team. - Week 42

Let's jump right into it!

Last week for P-Day, we got all the missionaries together for volleyball at our church building, and that was a lot of fun. Our chapel is one of the two in the entire mission that have a gym inside, so we get to take advantage of our resources. Our team won, just so everyone knows.

Right after that, we went out contacting and talked to a cool guy named 'T' from Cameroon. He said he wanted to come to church, so we swapped phone numbers and said we would keep in contact. An hour or two after that, as we were going home, we got a phone call from 'T'. He said he didn't want to wait until Sunday and that he wanted us to show him our church building the next day. We happily accepted his request and showed him around.

On the way back home from seeing 'T', we ran into some problems. Actually, we ran into a problem, with that problem being a very devout catholic man. He came up to us in the metro and greeted us as "brothers in Jesus." He then started yelling at us about how we're liars, pawns of Satan, and whatnot. It's not that big of a deal, but it was just a little awkward with him following us through the metro. I can normally reason with people like him, but he was way past understanding anything we told him. He finally stopped following us, but in the meantime, I entertained myself by running through scenarios on how I would lose him should he decide to follow us all the way home. I eventually decided on walking out of the train until the doors started closing, then 'bumping' him back into the train as the doors closed between us. It worked out in my head.

Yesterday, as we were again contacting through Brussels, we had a drunk Italian Greek man from Belgium stop us and start asking us questions. As he was debating with me on American gun rights, a second man came up and said: "Hey! Could you pray for me? I have a really important interview tomorrow." Elder Smith and I looked at each other to decide how to tackle the situation, then we split up. Elder Smith explained to the prayer guy that we could do "much more that just pray for you," while I continued trying to explain to the Italian Greek that I'm not personally able to withdraw all the American troops from Iraq overnight. Sorry, I'm not the President.

A few minutes into the double-teaming tactic, I turned around to see the prayer guy and my companion running away towards a tram with Elder Smith motioning for me to follow. I told the Italian Greek to stop drinking so much beer and quickly ran across 7 lanes of Brussels traffic to catch the tram with my companion and the prayer guy. I had no idea what was going on. I soon found out that the prayer guy was named 'D', and we were going to teach him in the tram on the way to the hospital where he works. One thing led to another, and bam! We have another lesson scheduled and he wants to come to church. Life is good.

We found another guy this week named 'B', which puts the total up to three. All three of them are around 24 and are good at basketball. In fact, 'D's' older brother plays basketball professionally in Brussels. All three are coming to play with us at the church next Saturday, and they're bringing friends. We're going to have the best church ball team ever!

There's your weekly excitement from the promised land. Enjoy life and I'll see you later.

Elder Wilson