Brendon's Louisville Kentucky Mission: They Serving Bullets not Jesus Christ

What a couple weeks! We've had baptisms, lessons, saw some unsavory parts of Louisville, and most importantly saw God's hand in many ways!!

First one was two Tuesdays ago. We had gotten in contact with a referral from across the river in Indiana about a man named Christian who speaks English but is better at French. Turns out that he's in Louisville often and doesn't have a permanent residence currently so we arranged to meet up at a McDonalds and as we were getting some food, the cashier asked for a daily verse and we heard a voice behind us saying "oh yeah they do". We turned around to see Elder Ballard, the local legend service missionary, and he had some time to join in our lesson and help teach the restoration! We've met with Christian one other time last week and he's also come to church! He's really cool and seems super interested in the book of Mormon. He apparently has a lot of history as well with missionaries in a bunch of states including: Texas, Colorado, Maine, and Indiana. Very high hopes for him.

Also starting two weeks ago we decided to check out an apartment complex in our area. It's definitely the sketchiest area I've been to yet. But as we were looking around we found a family who, as We've come back a few times to try and teach, apparently has met with French missionaries in the past. That was very surprising because they're not in our area book. We're hoping to go back this week. To explain the subject line haha once last week we went and were going to go to a neighboring complex but saw some police cars over there. And some grounds keeping guys said "you don't want to go over there. See the police? They serving bullets not Jesus Christ!"

We started meeting with a family and the parents are Moses and Sifa. They moved from Uganda 5 years ago. She fed us Fufu yesterday and Elder Xanthos said its the best he's ever had. They both seem pretty interesting so we're trying to build speed and see what happens. But after we left we went to meet with another couple named Andrew and Marina, as we got there we saw someone out on the porch and asked where he's from. Apparently he's from Uganda and he's Moses' brother! But even crazier they're both brothers with Andrew! So somehow we found a family and have been teaching them independently, haha.

We met again with Tangente! He said he definitely wants to be baptized, but the thing that's stopping him now is that he has a 3 week trip thing for the national guard and doesn't want to rush his baptism. So now we have to wait until the end of June until he returns and hopefully will be ready to be baptized then. Sadly though Elder Xanthos leaves on June 24th so he won't be here until then. But I have faith that Tangente will be ready to be baptized relatively soon, but God definitely has his own plans.

Yesterday we helped with a English baptism of a man who's paralyzed from the waist down. To solve this problem, Elder Sokup and Elder Xanthos carried him into the font, then Elder Kurr said the prayer and put his hand on him while the other two lowered him down. My part in all this was to get his cot ready for him to change when he was done and hold the door. But it was a very special meeting. And Marine came to watch as well!

Speaking of marine, we're trying to get her interested in family history and the temple, but she's definitely taking this one at her own pace. We're hoping also that she'll start coming to YSA activities to get to know the ward better and be interested in making friends in the church.

One very powerful way that we saw God's hand was through a referral. We received a self referral a few weeks ago from someone named Massan. We never were able to get in contact with them and there was also no information about who they were or what they wanted in the referral but we kept trying. On Saturday we we had like an hour and didn't know what to do so we decided to go and knock their door. Turns out it was a couple from Togo who had been waiting for missionaries to visit them for a while because they'd met some English ones! They seemed very receptive and we are meeting with them again in a couple days. And it was totally inspired that we happened to choose to go there at the exact time that we did.

Crazy good miracles that we see in our every day lives, especially mine haha. I can see God's hand every single day when I look for it and I know that he'll be in your life if you let him. He loves his children and wants nothing more than their joy. And I'm with him there, I wish and pray for all of you to be finding joy in your daily lives. Love you all!