Good Deed Gone Wrong

 December 9, 2019

So, this week me and my companion were just walking down the street, headed to our rendezvous when suddenly around the corner comes this kid about 15 years old, booking it! As he's headed towards us, he trips and falls and dozens of CDs fly out of his bag and go all into the road. So Golden moment right! We start helping pick them up. Weird thing was, though, that as we were picking them up the kid disappears again around the corner, and we see these cops on motos go through the intersection. Looking at the CDs I saw that they all were just blank, written on with permanent marker. The Kid came back and we handed him back his CD's. He was very thankful and explained that he was running because the cops were chasing him because he was selling illegally copyrighted music. Haha, well in the heat of all that I couldn't think of anything to say to him except to wish him good luck and that he shouldn't do that and then was off again. So yup, in an effort to do a good deed, we helped a criminal instead... awkward.  😬

We did a service project today as a mission and cleaned up this little block park (I guess you could call it), it's more just like a bench area with grass. We swept it all and painted all the benches. We also cut all the grass, nope not with a lawnmower, not a weed wacker, but with machetes! And let me tell ya, it takes FOREVER!!! Shout out to my mission president who was swinging that machete like a pro and who literally cut like half of it by himself. #nomissionpresidentbeatsthat. It was so funny that people would comment while going by. Every other person came up and asked what we were doing like they had never seen a service project before. Some asked if the police knew what we were doing. The homeless guys were mad because we painted their benches they were laying on. A bunch of people were super encouraging and so many people shouted out good work or just stopped to watch us and tell us thank you. We even got 3 people who wanted to come to church just because of that! A moto taxi driver even stopped and helped us paint all the benches! It's so crazy how open people become when you serve them and show true love towards a people. When we are in the service of your fellow men we are truly in the service of our God! 

Other Highlights of the week were seeing this fight break out between this HUGE mama and this moto driver. This mama was soooo mad and she practically picked this guy up and threw him! When he got up and came back, she threw him again! He learned his lesson and stopped arguing with her, 😂 I'd be scared of her too.  

We went on splits with the assistants and got to work again with my x-comp, Elder Sorensen! While working we felt to go into this one house and turns out the guy was a pastor! Haha, that turned into a 45 min. discussion on his doorstep just trying to get through explaining our simple message of the restoration because he liked talking so much. After we backed up everything we said with scripture and got him pinned on the fact that he can't deny the oBok of Mormon if he has never read and prayed about, he stuttered over his words and quickly tried ushering us away telling us that the Holy Ghost will confirm that it's true to him, so he didn't need to read it. It was super funny.

Love y'all! have a great week!

Elder Briggs

sorry no pics.  next week!👍