The Things A Missionary Wishes He Could Do or Have

Received July 25, 2011

I've done some thinking this week about what some of the things are that I find myself wishing that I could do or have. It's an interesting list of things, most of which I can't really do anything about. But a guy can hope right?

1) Why can't there just be a sign on someone's door when they are not home to tell us not to sit there waiting at their door for 3 minutes.
2) If I could speak Turkish, that would be great!
3) Just get that one appointment with people (before they close the door in your face) in which they would be able to feel the spirit and decide to be baptized.
4) Have power over the government to just grant people visas or citizenship so that they could get work and pay for their own trip to church on Sunday instead of requiring the Branch President to go out of his way to pick up someone at 8:15 in the morning.
5) To just have our own computer so that we didn't have to use the nasty ones at the internet cafes.
6) Have unlimited supplies of all languages of the Book of Mormon at hand when we promise someone, "Yeah, we have it in Croatian (or Albanian, Urdu, Arabic, Greek, etc.) and we can bring that over tomorrow".
7) Have a lie detector to tell us if they are actually going to be there at such and such a time and at such and such a place.
8) A full map that actually covers our whole area.
9) For those in the Alpine German Speaking Mission, Lederhosen!
10) Free haircuts from people that speak English.
11) A big huge list of other things that just show up during the day.

So, yeah, what can you do? Just hope that the point and the purpose of the message makes it's way into their ears and doesn't find the way out too fast. Sometimes you have situations like what's happening right now where a member of the church just comes up to you and starts talking to you about how he has been in Thailand for the past while and produces a Book of Mormon in English, Thai and Hindi. Sometimes crazy stuff like that just happens. This place is awesome and the people are sooooo cool. Ich liebe das Vaterland! I hope that everyone has a great week and a good timing doing whatever it is that they are doing. Tschusss....