The Next Lance Armstrong

This week was a good one. We still aren't having too much success with knocking. We knock close to a hundred doors a week and so far we have only been invited inside two houses. Everybody here is religious, which is a great thing, but at the same time it is the worst. People have already made up their minds to not talk to us before we even open our mouths. Bummer. But hey, we try to leave good impressions so that maybe they will be a little bit more open to the next group of Elders that knock on their door. The work is especially tough on game days here in Ames. Iowa State is right around the corner from our proselyting area so everybody shuts down on Saturdays for game day. We walked around for about an hour and literally every person we talked to said they couldn't hear our message because the game was on. I guess some people may consider football is more important than eternal salvation.

One funny experience from knocking was on Saturday night during the game. We knocked a house and it took a few minutes for the person to open the door, but we heard the TV so we kept knocking. When the lady came to the door, she was easily one hundred and ten years old.  She opened her door and looked through the screen and before we even said anything she yelled "OH COME ON" and slammed the door. We were able to get out a couple words about Jesus so we counted it as an OYM and went to the next door.

It rained a lot this week.  Iowa's rainstorms put Utah's to shame. Unfortunately we didn't have the car this week, (we are in a car share with some Elders in the other Ames ward) so we were cruisin’ around on bikes this week. I’m pretty sure by the end of this transfer the Ames Elders could put together a team for the Tour de France. Nonetheless, my legs are going to be shredded here soon. We had an appointment that was a couple miles away from our apartment, so we put on our rain jackets and got to it. By the time we got to the appointment, I took my shoes off and poured out about a liter of water from each. What a blessing. But it's all worth it. 

Although knocking is incredibly frustrating and demoralizing, I sure love being a missionary. One of these days we are going to knock into a family who is ready to hear the message and they actually won't close the door on us. It will be beautiful.

The Next Lance Armstrong (minus the roids),

Elder Obray

My companion riding into the sunset

Can't really tell here but that is one of the thousands of corn fields around. 

We have to get creative to dry off our shoes because things literally don't dry off here. The humidity keeps things wet for days. My shower towel smells really good.