Alex's Mission: Week 28-Holladay, UT

Haruma and his son at the baptism

Okay, this has been a super crazy week. Serving in Salt Lake is like a completely different mission! There is so many problems here. Drugs are rampant and everywhere. I feel like in Rock Springs we didn't deal with those people who struggled with that kind of stuff. I would venture to say that about half of our teaching pool have hard-core drug problems. I never really realized in high school how much that drugs can completely destroy your life. It is very upsetting to walk into broken homes. Parents who may not even care about their kids just about their next usage of drugs and how they will get it. That is all the kids grow up knowing. They are lost and confused with life. There is nothing to hold their families together and so a lot of times they end up hating each other and betraying each other for drugs. A bright positive for working in Salt Lake is the members! I always thought never really cared for "Utah Mormons" , but they actually are some of the most loving and supportive people I've ever met. They are so kind and will go out of their way to do almost anything for us. We have so many places to stop by on Christmas. There are some amazing member missionary families! We have seen the work pick up immensely while we have been here. Looking through our area book this morning, this was a dreaded area. There have only been 3 baptisms in the stake ALL year! I will talk about a few cool stories that happened this week!

We recently met a family from the Congo! They are living with a recent convert from the Congo. He introduced them to us and we taught them the first lesson! They want to be baptized. We invited them to a baptism this past Saturday. They said that they didn't have a car but would walk. We were like ok! Driving to the baptism, we saw them walking and they were going the wrong way! We pulled over and since we can't take them in our car we walked with them the rest of the way to the baptism. I have yet to meet Haruma's family but from what he says they all want to be baptized. Yesterday, a member picked up Haruma for church! He is about 5'2 and super funny! He can only speak broken English and his native language is Swahili. He said that if we taught him the gospel he would teach us Swahili! We were like deal! So he teaches us a lot of Swahili words! It is amazing to see all the nationalities that are in Salt Lake! I absolutely love Africans!

Another kind of crazy experience we had this week was with one of our investigators named Andrew. Andrew has done a lot of bad things in his life. His story is while he was in jail this previous time, his cell mate introduced him to the Book of Mormon. He said at first he thought his cell mate was crazy. He just talked to him about it to keep conversation in the cell. He ended up reading it and loved it. He found peace when reading it that he couldn't find anywhere else and he knew it was true! Anyways he got out of prison and wanted to be baptized. He had memorized all these scriptures and verses that were powerful to him and he'd quote them. All of his family is non members and so we organized a lesson at temple square with his family. We couldn't get in contact with them and couldn't find them at Temple Square. We stopped by their house afterwards and we saw Curtis, his brother. He said he didn't know where Andrew was and he said he wanted to go but Andrew just disappeared. We stopped by the next night. Curtis came to the door and said he couldn't believe what happened. He let us in and he was beat up. His face was bruised, his arm was broken, and he had cuts on his face and his body. The house was destroyed. They had an inch thick marble table that was broken in half. Everything was trashed. He told us what happened. Andrew is an alcoholic and came back drunk. He was making fun of Curtis and then things got heated. Curtis wouldn't punch him. They fought and and Andrew ended up grabbing a knife. Curtis called the cops and Andrew is now back in jail. Curtis then started crying saying that he had tried to live life the right way. He had a job and earned money the right way and watched his family steal. He started working when he was 12 to support his family. Andrew in his rage destroyed the TV that he had bought and the play station. Andrew tore up the only family picture that they had before their brothers death a few nights previously. Curtis said he thought about killing himself. He was tired of doing things for other people and trying to hold his family together because it just wasn't working. He said he felt so empty inside and didn't know what to do. In a nutshell, we promised him that he would get what he was looking for if he read the Book of Mormon. We said that we cared about him and that the Savior's arms were always outstretched for him. We promised him that if he listened and acted upon our message he would be filled and his family situation would eventually work out.

We also had a devotional by Elder Holland. I got to meet him and shake his hand. He is a very passionate speaker. I thought that he would chastise our mission but he said he was very pleased with what he saw. He said that our president had a good mission. So I was pretty happy about that!

Honestly that is only brushing the surface of what happened this week. I love this mission. I love the diversity of people here. I love my Savior and I am honored to serve him! Thank you for your love and support it is appreciated.

-Elder Bass

Later Notes: I loved being with Elder Thompson. He was passionate and dedicated. Each companion taught me something. Elder Thompson the importance of being passionate about the gospel and taught me to be more social and how being more social can make me a more effective missionary and also help me make a bigger difference in the world. He also gave me a desire to make a difference in the world. I was impressed with his plans and his expectations to change the world.

I remember we walked out of a lesson one of our first nights together. I was like dang you're a good teacher. He said yeah you too. I said that it was going to be an awesome transfer.

I gave a blessing to a man in the hospital that had an profound effect on me and strengthened my testimony of the priesthood authority. I said in my journal:"It is crazy that God give that authority to people like me." I said that i felt the spirit before and after the blessing.

Throughout my time in Valley View, we would find out all the time about girls thinking we were cute. All of the young women would always act weird and awkward around us. We made sure not to flirt with any of the girls.

Pictures from the Christmas dinner/party for our mission: