August 14, 2008

Dear Family
Greetings from Northeast Philadelphia "where rowhomes and inner cities are replaced with flowers and single condominiums and apartments." This week has been a very good week indeed. The reason why Elder Covington and I are opening up the Bensalem area is to get the active members and the leaders of the church more involved in missionary work. For the first three weeks we never met with any of the members and all we did was hunt for less active members of the church. It was quite boring and frustrating. But this week we made a conscious effort to get into active members houses.
Our efforts to get into the active members homes paid off quite well. On Sunday we visited an loud, outspoken, outgoing african american individual by the name of Perry Davis Jr. When we asked if there was anyone that we could go and teach he gave us four refferals. In fact he even replied that he would introduce us to one of the families he suggested for us to go and see.
Plans were then made for Perry Davis to take us over to the families house the very next day. As you can imagine Elder Covington and I were feeling increadibly excited when Perry was so very willing to allow us to visit his friends. We approached the door with all the confidence and excitement in the world. Perry Knocked on the door, but much to our dissappointment no one came to the door. However, this did not detter Perry Davis from giving us those refferals. After a few more moments Bro. Davis checked to see if the door was locked and when he found that it was not, he entered with great haste. he then made his way to the refridgerator took out a box of choclate ecclairs began to eat them and then proceeded to make his way to the television.
Brother Davis then invited us to follow him. Sheepishly I replied that this might not be a good idea but he beckoned me to follow. Finally I gave into his cries and we entered into the home. We then made our way to the sofa where we akwardly sat and waited for someone to come either come down the stairs or enter the house. After several long and akward moments we saw a middle aged man comming down the stair case. When the man turned and made eye contact with the three strangers he looked quite shocked. He looked at us and looked at Perry again and then said "P p p Perry? I haven't seen you in seven years" Looking cool and collected, Perry responded to the mans shocked look and statement with a "hey Pete long time no see. These are two of my church friends and I invited them over to have a lesson with you."
We then began our lesson, all individuals with the exception of Perry Davis trying to recover from the shock and awe of what had happened. In all of my days of being a missionary I have never been so scared of teaching a lesson in my life. Elder Covington and I went on and began teaching about the importance of the family, occassionaly being interrupted by Perry Davis asking if we needed something to drink or eat and reassuring us that if we ever needed anything we didn't have to ask all we had to do was just go into the cupboards or the refrigerator and take.