This week has seemed like it has FLOWN by!! Me and Elder Bass were super busy and so the week just flew by. We had several lessons at the first of the week and we have an investigator named  Brittney that we have been teaching! We received a text from her earlier in the week that said that she would be home and we should come see her and "I miss you girls." I guess the Sister missionaries before us didn't tell her that they were leaving and that Elders were going to be moving into the area. Me and Elder Bass decided to not text her back and just show up and surprise her that we weren't sister missionaries. She looked a little shocked when we showed up but she invited us in and we were able to teach her a lesson. We talked with her and committed her to be baptized on September 6th and she said that she would prepare to be baptized on that day. She has had trouble recognizing an answer to her prayers but we have confidence that as we continue to teach her and prepare her to be baptized she will slowly gain an understanding of how God answers prayers through the Holy Ghost. I'm super excited to continue to work with her and see the progress she makes! Leona, the investigator that we had last week dropped us this week. She doesn't have a phone and she was in the hospital with some health issues when we went by her house this past week for an appointment we made with her. We were able to catch her later in the week and she talked to us and said that she wanted to stay with the church that she currently attends but appreciates how we had helped her come closer to Christ. All of the other investigators that the sisters were meeting with before we came also didn't show much interest in meeting with us anymore. I guess they enjoyed the social aspect of meeting with girls and weren't interested in meeting with us even though we share the same message. It has been hard "white washing" this area because neither one of us knows the area or the people super well. Since we are on a car rotation of having a car 2 weeks and then having one week without we lost our car Wednesday and walked all of the rest of this week. All of our appointments canceled on us on Friday so we spent almost all of Friday, Saturday, and anytime this week that we didn't have appointments knocking doors and trying to talk to people about the message that we share. I would say that we probably knocked on over 300 doors and we talked to over 130 people this past week. We were able to meet a lot of interesting people this past week and had several people offer us cold water! I love talking to people and I am starting to finally get used to talking to people and getting used to making sure that the people that open the doors to us know that the message that we share can benefit their lives. We had several people that we met this week that I know knew that they could probably benefit from meeting with us but preconceived ideas about our church and them being comfortable where they are hindered them from agreeing to meet with us. We had one lady Saturday that came out onto her porch and just wanted to argue with us about how "unbiblical" our church is and didn't listen when we showed her Bible verses that back up all of the questions that she had. I learned that when it comes to people like that, there is no use in having a long conversation with them because they are not open to anything we say and it is just a waste of time for them to try to argue with us. The Spirit can never be in situations where there is tension and so anytime somebody tries to argue or prove me and Elder Bass wrong we usually don't try to prove anything to them. Our message is unique in that we are only there to present information to people and then we turn it to them to pray about. Our jobs are never to convince anyone of anything but to allow them to have the information they need to pray to Heavenly Father about whether the things that we share with them are true. We had 2 people yesterday after church when we were door knocking that were trying to tell us that we were going to hell. One guy told me and Elder Bass that we "hadn't invited Jesus into our hearts" and that we needed to make sure that we were right with them because for all we knew we could fall off his porch and die and then we would go to hell. But as a whole the people of Holt either say they arent interested and slam the door in our face, or they are nice and just simply say they are not interested. We have a few appointments set up this week that are people that we met while door knocking. I'm excited to see where those go. I'll share 2 experiences that we had with people that was kinda interesting.

So the first one happened Thursday afternoon. Me and Elder Bass use the GPS that I brought and have put all of the less active members, part-member families, and investigators addresses in it. We then use those addresses if we ever are in an area that is close to them or if we have an appointment that cancels we go and see them. It is a pretty great system that we have set up. But since we were walking we were trying to figure out who we were going to go see next and decided to sit on the curb. Out of nowhere a man walks up to us with his baby in his hand and squats down and shows us his baby girl and asked if we were "Jesus People" and we got up and walked with him to his house. Turns out he is from Iraq and used to be Muslim but hates them now. We kept talking about how they are killing all of his friends and his family is in danger and asked us if we knew anyone famous that had the power to save them. He also said that he wants to follow Jesus and do his will for his life so he agreed to meet with us. We have seen him randomly in 2 different parts of Holt either on a bike or doing something else but he has had to cancel both appointments we have set up with him so I guess we will see how committed he is...

The second thing happened Saturday night. We met a guy on a nicer part of town that we had a great conversation with. He then told us about an experience that he had when he was younger where he had a dream where he saw a blue light and words appeared that said "I love you, and I always will." He said that he believed that it was God and that is something that he had always held dear. He made sure that we knew that God loved us and that he hoped that we truly knew that. It was pretty cool that he was willing to share such a personal experience with us.

Well, that's about it that happened this week. Just meeting a lot of people and getting used to the little bit of humidity that is in Michigan! But I love it here! I know a mission isn't going to be easy and it hasn't been easy at all so far but I know that it'll be worth it!! I think about and pray about all of y'all constantly! Thank you for all of the prayers and support!! I can testify that there truly is power in prayer and that our Heavenly Father is aware of our righteous desires and wants to bless all of his children!!

Thanks again,

Elder Bloskas