May 22, 2017
Hello!!
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| Weekly Planning ft a Ritz |
Holy heck what a week! We've been working really hard out
here in Gilbert and I am EXHAUSTED.
Per usual, we saw a lot of miracles this week! On Tuesday
our zone set a transfer baptismal goal. We decided that ten baptisms was a good
goal for this transfer. It's a pretty big goal for this zone, but we know it
was inspired because each companionship had been praying about a goal for the
zone for a week and then last Tuesday our Zone Leaders got up and said "on
the count of three we're all going to say the goal we felt was right at the
same time." And every companionship said ten! So then we all knelt down
together and prayed and still felt like ten was right. It was pretty cool.
And then ever since...it's like the miracles and the work in
this zone has just EXPLODED. I feel like every time our phone rings it's
another "Zone Miracle" text! It's been awesome! I know that two
different sets of Elders found golden investigators this week and put them on
date, so that's exciting...and Sister Ogawa and I are getting excited to find
our golden investigator. We know there's at least one out there for us!! :)
Some of the miracles we saw...
On Friday we were knocking a door of a LA family and they
weren't home...and Sister Ogawa and I were debating knocking a door a few
houses down of a Part-Member family. We couldn't decide, even after praying
about it...when suddenly we saw a car pull into their driveway! We walked over
there and it was the non-member wife, B, and we talked briefly, before inviting
her to meet with us and she totally accepted! She was pumped!! We'll meet with
her this week. :)
Later that night we decided to go tracting. I didn't feel
like we needed to go tracting at that time...but I just thought that was me
just not wanting to tract haha. However, the more doors we knocked the more I
felt like there was a specific place that we needed to be, and that place
wasn't where we were. This feeling got to the point that I told Sister Ogawa,
and she reminded me that during weekly planning that morning we had set a goal
to focus more on following the Spirit and adapting our plans accordingly, so we
stopped tracting and said a prayer. Afterwards we pulled out our planners and
this one name just jumped out at me--it was like it was written in yellow. I
was like "We need to go stop by the Ls right now." The Ls are a
part-member/former-investigator family, and they live on the other side of our
area, so we hopped on our bikes and went there as fast as we could. When we got
there, the kids were outside and we started talking to them. After a little bit
the dad came out and we were able to talk to him a bit before they all went
inside for dinner. We've heard that they've had some bad experiences with
missionaries in the past, so they're usually pretty closed-off...but they were
so open and so friendly! And we got the chance to establish a little bit of a
friendship with them because the kids were outside right at the time we got
there...thanks, Holy Ghost!
We saw a cool miracle with the Lord placing someone in our
path who didn't have water...and we were right in front of a member's house so
we were able to run in and get him water. We talked to him a little bit and
invited him to church and he wasn't ready for the gospel yet, but we definitely
planted a seed!
And finally....the coolest miracle of them all!! We had a
lesson this week with our investigator, M. He's an awesome guy. He's been
investigating the church for a while, and he knows SO much about the doctrine!
His hold up is that he smokes. He has a crazy life-story and he's overcome SO
much, and he knows the church is true, but smoking is like his Achilles heel.
Our past few lessons have been all about the Atonement and it's enabling power
and how he can use the Atonement to overcome smoking and about how if he tries
his best then Christ will make up the rest, etc...and in our last lesson he got
a little defensive and was kinda like "when it's time for me to quit God
will tell me." So going into this lesson we were really nervous and really
apprehensive about what direction to take. We prayed and prayed and PRAYED
about what to teach him and felt like we needed to invite him to baptism, give
him a baptismal date, and re-teach the Restoration. The only problem was...we
didn't know what part of the Restoration he needed to learn more about. We straight
went into the lesson and were like "wing it with the Spirit." To
start the lesson we asked M what he remembered about the Restoration of the
gospel and he legit gave US the lesson...so we were like shoot we don't know
what to do...but we brought our Ward Mission Leader with us and he was CLUTCH!!
He looks at us and goes "Sisters, can we talk about authority??" and
we were like "Sure, sounds good." And he proceeded to teach all about
authority and about the Priesthood BEAUTIFULLY. He opened the door for us to
give a few analogies about the importance of authority so M could understand,
and by the end of it M was like "oh...NOW I get it!!" and THEN!! Our
WML goes "M, have you ever thought about holding the Priesthood?" and
M was dead silent--and M is never quiet. It was seriously the most inspired
question I've ever heard. After a few moments M was like "Honestly, I
have. And I want to." And all of us were like "M, we all want that
for you...and we're going to help you get there." So we shared a scripture
about baptism and he got a little emotional and then I was like "M, we
know baptism is your next step. We've prayed about it and we've felt it's time.
Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding
the proper priesthood authority from God?" The Spirit was so strong!!!
AND.....he said, “NO.” Haha what a let-down right?? BUT he goes "I'm not
ready to enter the water yet!! I'm not worthy!!" Smoking...that Achilles
heel. And we all assured him that he could get worthy, and he could be clean
again...and I said "We're not trying to get you in the water next
week...we believe you can be ready by July 1...will you prepare yourself to be
baptized on that day?" And he said he'd pray about it!! His roommate was
like "You can be ready by then...that's six weeks away!" But he was
still apprehensive, so all of us went around and bore him our testimonies about
the power of baptism and we all said that we knew that we would see him hold
the Priesthood, and we'd see him in the temple...and after all that he turned
to his roommate and said "Well... I guess this means I’d better start
using patches." Like nicotine patches! So even though we didn't put him
solidly on date...exactly what we wanted to happen happened. He's going to
start trying to quit smoking in earnest now :) A super cool miracle, it’s probably
the coolest lesson thus far on my mission.
Also this week one of our wards had a fundraiser for the
young men and they sold pulled pork...so out of the six days members fed us
guess how many days we had pulled pork sandwiches? Five, five out of six
days! Let me tell ya, it FELT like a miracle when we walked into dinner last
night and it wasn't pulled pork. Haha, just kidding, we love and appreciate our
members, and we're very blessed to be taken care of as well as we are out here!
One of the scriptures that our ward mission leader shared in
M's lesson was Matthew 16:13-18. It talks about not only the importance of
authority, but also the importance of personal revelation, and it's been on my
mind a lot recently. Christ asks his apostles who people think He is, and they
speculate for a bit before Peter finally says "Thou art the Christ"
and Christ says "Blessed art thou, for flesh and blood hath not revealed
it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." (This is super
paraphrased) As missionaries we see all the time the importance of personal
revelation. So many people we teach rely on the logic of man, instead of
turning to the Lord for the answers they're seeking. My nugget of wisdom for
the week is to trust God more than you trust man! Men can lead us astray...but
God never will! :)
I love you all! Have a good week!
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