04/10/2017 - I Love It and Am So Full of Joy This Week!

Brothers and Sisters this week was an interesting one and full of miracles so here it goes, we are jumping right in. 

First off, our investigator Tia is really truly the best and has been so prepared for the gospel.  I am so excited for her baptism that will almost surely come. We taught her wednesday and sunday. The only problem I can see is she is getting a little behind in school because she is super busy, and so her father said she can only meet us on sundays. Also she mentioned her dad isn't a fan of her going to church but he hasn't said she can't, and she turns 18 in a few months anyway. So please pray for her.

But this week she was asking us questions about how to pay for a mission because she wants to serve! Super cool, she is so ready. And one more thing, sunday we were talking about the commandments, and we were going to break up the lesson and not do all of them at once so we decided to leave out the word of wisdom. Anyway, at the end of the lesson we asked her if she had questions and she said she hasn't drank any coffee since we started meeting and she asked when we were going to talk about that! So we are like ok, and taught her the Word of Wisdom and she was excited to follow it! It really is amazing!

THE NEXT MIRACLE. We had been teaching these two investigators Alfred and Adar. They are from Sudan and the language barrier was pretty tough, and both go to school and recently got jobs, so we hadn't seen them in a while. Anyway, turns out they had another cousin move in to live with them with his family, three kids and a wife. But get this, HE IS A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH!!!!!!!!!!!! His family isn't but they came to church! And we are too excited because we received an amazing opportunity where we can have him talk to Adar and Alfred when we teach! It was amazing! I am so excited for what is in store.

NEXT MIRACLE! This one is especially important to me. When I got to this area I set a personal goal to work on our member missionary work. To get just one person to change their attitude and go out of their way to share the gospel, to try and be a little different. Because that is what our mission and mission president are about, as tracting here is really not successful at all. So we hit it hard. We visited our ward members in a week, invited all to share the gospel and have been following up since.  But another thing we did, that was especially unique and something only we have done, was ask individuals in the ward to share their testimony on the first sunday about missionary work. 

Now I want to remind you a couple weeks ago we visited [with some] who pretty much told us this wouldn't work and we didn't work nearly as hard as them on their missions because our mission doesn't focus on tracting and tracting only (for the record we still tract a lot, it just isn't priority) Well that was tough for me, but we pressed on and trusted in the Lord.

We invited people to bear testimony again this sunday and it was awesome, the spirit was so strong. But the miracle came after church. We were waiting for a ride to an appointment and sister P approached us. She said she needed some help, and said that when we invited her to share the gospel she knew it wasn't for her. But she said since then she felt a small urge, then at conference another, and this sacrament meeting she said there was a theme about sharing the gospel and she knew she had to do it. I was honestly blown away, I was so happy. So we are going to visit with her and set a specific way to help her because she needs some extra strength and help.

This gospel is so true! I love it and am so full of joy this week! The spirit has been amazing and I am so thankful for the blessings we have received. And I know that they are because we work hard here in the CP13. Anyway love you all and share the gospel!

In a letter to mom:  Also I almost forgot, we got to learn how to make sushi with this Japanese lady named Rose. Probably one of the nicest people I have ever met. She isn't a member and is older, like 80, so she doesn't want to change her ways.  But It is my honest opinion she will accept it in the next life.

Yes, the guys from sudan are interesting, this is why the language barrier is so tough. They can speech arabic, but can't read or write it. Very little English, but struggle to read it. But they do have their tribal language that probably a total of 500 people speak in the world. Super interesting right!