Year 2 - Letter 1 - New Orleans, LA

1 Ne 4:6 And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.

Hey everyone!

Pretty interesting week this week.  It was a good week.  Not a ton of lessons, but still really good.  We got a lot done.   One of the greatest things was we had our specialized training.  It started off with sister Wall sharing the disney short Johnny Appleseed.  It has a great song, and an awesome message that really applies to missionary work.  It was pretty cool.  Next, the Assistants talked about using the Book of Mormon effectively, and also about how we need to learn the "language" of the spirit, just like we are learning Spanish.  They applied Preach My Gospel chapter 7 to learning the language of the spirit, which was pretty cool.  Then President wall talked, and shared the buzzards talking in the Jungle Book, where they are talking and asking what they all want to do and can't make up their minds.  He taught us how we can never have a "buzzard" day.  It is all about vision.  We have a vision of all of our seats full at church.  We have a vision of a full session at the temple.  If we keep this vision in mind, we will start to put faces on the people in that vision, and we can figure out where we need to be, and how we can help them.  This has helped me a lot. 

Before specialized training, we had had a few "buzzard" days.  After specialized training however, nothing about the situation changed.  We still had fallen appointments and back ups.  What did change is what we did next.  We ended up contacting in an area north of Canal street, where we had seen some hispanics the other day.  It was awesome!  We saw this red jeep Cherokee drive up and it was stuffed with luggage and some mattresses on the top.  That is pretty much what it looks like when Hispanics move here.  So we went over and offered help, which the sole guy that was there accepted gratefully.  Turns out, he lived next door to where Daniel lived!  That was crazy!  I had seen this guy before, but he would always run inside to avoid us.  His name is Oscar, and he said we could come back.  He is really funny.  Drinks and smokes, but a good guy.  Can't wait to start to help him!

We also contacted another man named Otoniel.  He was pretty cool.  We don't know much about him, except that he goes to another evangelical church.  He seemed like he wanted to know more, so we will see how it goes.

Well, life is just grand!  We went out to New Orleans Burgers and Seafood.  I got a burger with mushrooms onions, and pepper jack cheese, and Elder Jones got a catfish po-boy.  Both were awesome!  We also got alligator poppers.  They were awesome too!  Alligator isn't too bad.  Well, that is pretty much it!  Love you all!  Thanks for everything!  

Love,

Elder Scott Turner Andrews