Dear friends and family,
Firstly because I haven't done this in awhile...
TOP TEN COOLEST THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO ME AND HERMANA SPENCER THIS WEEK
1. We taught a woman who very strongly believed she was a prophet in a home full of pentacostals. Let me give you a run down (translated into english) of what happened with her...
Hna Lindsey: "Ustedes saben que es un profeta?" (Do you all know what a prophet is?)
Profeta mujer: (with space in between each word for dramatic effect) "Yo soy un profeta." (I am a prophet.)
2. We started teaching a man that three years ago got shot in the head and THE BULLET IS STILL IN THERE. He's so cool. He just is gonna have trouble getting to church and stuff. Anyways, my life is so surreal that I am teaching him.
3. The guy we're teaching that just got out of prison explained how he felt the Holy Ghost when he read the book of mormon. Seriously that 2 minutes was worth me going on a mission. He's not super excellent with words, but the way he described it was that it made his heart feel like and then he just used his hands to like show his heart getting huge/exploding. It was so cool. But what made it even cooler was the fact that he said the whole thing with his eyes glistening and this like half smile on his face. SOMETIMES THE INVESTIGATORS JUST LIKE MAKE ME WANT TO CRY BECAUSE THEIR CONVERSIONS ARE JUST THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME. I am the luckiest girl in the world to be teaching this man. After years of being in and out of prison and being married to a member and not wanting to listen, he has finally finally finally FINALLY come around. And I think he might just be the best thing that has ever happened to me. I'm gonna cry buckets at his baptism.
4. Ok so another way investigators make me cry is when they are so rocking awesome and then they suddenly drop off the face of the earth. That happened to one of our investigators this week, but we felt we should stop by last night and HE WAS HOME AND HE HAD A FAMILY EMERGENCY WHICH IS WHY HE HAD BEEN GONE AND NOT ANSWERING CALLS OR ANYTHING AND I WAS SO INCREDIBLY HAPPY BECAUSE THAT MEANS HE'S NOT AVOIDING US LIKE THE PLAGUE BECAUSE HE DOESN'T WANT TO GET BAPTIZED. (cause that happens sometimes...)
5. So the mom of the 9 year old boy we recently baptized (the one who broke her knee in like January, and is still recovering); just found out that her brother has cancer. When we visited with her this week, she talked about how she had shared her testimony with him about how Christ and his Atonement can help him overcome all things; and I was just so overjoyed because her testimony has grown SO MUCH through this trial she has had-- and I know that God prepared her so that she would be able to help her brother through this hard time...
6. Ok so I tried to complete the Relief Society challenge to read the book of mormon in 60 days even though I'm on a mission and time is like not a thing that we have (although we have the 20 minutes at the beginning of our personal study to study scriptures for ourselves-- the rest is for our investigators and the lessons we are going to teach)-- and I just finished 4th nephi and even though I'm like a day over I only have like 80 something pages left so I'll def finish in like the next two days! :D Having a specific goal like that has given some extra energy into my life which is awesome...
7. We celebrated national fake moustache day by taking pictures when we had district meeting. The pictures are pretty golden. I'll send them next week..
8. An investigator that had been out of town for the weekend CAME TO CHURCH even though he hadn't slept hardly at all and it was 9 AM. I LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE ARE JUST SO COOL.
9. We took out this really sweet couple named the Sotos to teach, and the person that we were trying to see WASN'T HOME. AWFUL because they lived like 30 min away and had driven all the way there just for that appt and they were dressed up and everything. WELL NEVER FEAR WE HAD AWESOME BACKUP PLANS and we visited some brand new investigators that had been talking the lessons online/over the phone from people in salt lake before we found them and so we had this really cool lesson that wasn't even planned...it was AWESOME.
10. We met this lady named Angela who, as my companion put it, basically "fell out of the sky for the Elders" because she has already been to church several times, has read ALL the pamphlets for ALL the lessons we teach, is about halfway through the book of mormon and watched the restoration movie online by herself. She's like getting baptized next week or something. Sometimes the missionaries do alot, and sometimes the missionaries LITERALLY just put people in the water cause God already did all the work...
So, yeah, that was our week. A lot of our week was spent being frustrated with people for disappearing and trying to find people by knocking on tons of doors; but I like to focus on the cool things that happen. So there's the top ten!
Ok, now my spiritual message for the week is WE ARE SUPER DUPER DEPENDENT ON GOD. And that's basically the entire point of faith. We have this investigator that doesn't like to ask God for things in his prayers-- cause he feels like he would be bothering God to do so. Now as much as we need to not ask for silly things like cars or boyfriends or winning competitions-- when we are asking for good things in our prayers, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM WITH ASKING GOD FOR THINGS. And when I was planning the lesson in which we were going to explain that (because since he disappeared we weren't quite able to teach him that yet), I was realizing-- the whole ENTIRE concept of faith is that we are dependent on God. Everything we have, he gave us-- and everything we want to succeed in, we are going to need his help with. A lot of life, then, as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, is about humbling ourselves before God and realizing how much we need him. And the more we realize that-- and ACT LIKE IT-- the more he blesses us in our efforts, and the less we have to do everything alone.
That born alone, die alone thing-- yeah, no. With or without God, life is a struggle. But, with God nothing is impossible (see luke 1:37), and so it's A WHOLE LOT BETTER if we've got him on our side.
Stay strong, nourish your faith, and keep fighting with God on your side;
WITH GREAT LOVE AND BIG HUGS,
Hermana Lindsey