This
week was a good week. Helped me refocus and get that fire back in me.
Two weeks ago it felt like we hit a rut, for many reasons. But
thankfully, zone conference was this last week and it came at the
perfect time.
Tuesday we were pretty busy and we got a lot done.
We figured out that tracting is more effective and inspired if we break
it up into 30 minute increments. It all adds up and it's much easier to
do quick little spurts of tracting, we're supposed to track how many
hours we knock. We had lunch with our ward mission leader, though he
wasn't feeling good so it was with his wife. She made a King Crab salad,
supposedly that's North West thing, she's from Portland. It was really
good! She makes delicious food, but during our lunch she had Elder
Bednar's broadcast at Education Week playing, that was cool! It made me
excited to continue doing missionary work when I get home.
Anyway, before we had lunch we did a 30 minute
tracting sesh and we contacted these three girls that were extremely
open and interested and we got three new investigators! Then, after
lunch we had a couple appointments and one of them was with a lady who
requested herself on mormon.org. It's
the first time we met her, and she really just needed a Bible, but we
taught her the first lesson and she said that it all could be possible.
We invited her to read, pray and to be baptized and she said yes! We
didn't get her on date, but we're meeting with her again this week and
she's almost done with 1 Nephi. That's exciting. Then, since we were in
that city we went to meet with a less active lady who came to church two
weeks ago and she is SO ready to come back to church. She came all by
herself. No one was prodding her, no one was reminding her, she just
felt like she needed to come back to church. She was attending other
churches, but she said she couldn't feel the Spirit there quite as
strongly, that's when she knew she needed to come back to the LDS
church. She's been reading the Book of Mormon and praying and we're
going to reteach her the lessons to help her remember stuff. We're
excited to work with her.
Wednesday was zone conference. Unfortunately, I
didn't get to see Sister Jones or Sister Andrus, they're both in the
same zone together, but this was the first zone conference that our zone
combined with theirs :'(. That's okay, I survived. I got to see one of
the Spanish Sisters and that was good! But it really pumped me up
because we went over and made a list of the responses that we get while
we tract. Like "I'm Baptist," or "I've already found Jesus," or a myriad
of others. The funniest was when someone said, "There's no soliciting
in this neighborhood," you could hear an audible sigh of frustration
emit from all the missionaries. But we discussed that when these people
aren't hostile, how should we respond in order for them to feel the
Spirit? President talked about how we're hear to proclaim the gospel,
their response does not really matter. Just like Christ, He was sent to
proclaim the gospel as well, but not everyone responded the way they
should. There was an Elder that said he didn't care for sharing the
history of the church or anything, but he focused on sharing scripture
and baring testimony. I wish I could reiterate what he said because it
was extremely powerful, sometimes I get stuck on the history, but really
I just need to focus on the Spirit. My favorite was another Elder said,
"Don't put down what you know to be true." In all reality, if we know
it's true, it doesn't make it any less true if someone else does not
know it yet. Anyway, it was really good and pumped me up.
Sadly, I was so ready to work, but we mostly drove
the rest of the day. We had exchanges and then we had to get to dinner
and we got to that late because of traffic, so once dinner was over we
had to go back home. So, couldn't put all the inspiration to the test
until the next day.
I'm also so thankful for the mission I'm serving in.
There's a guy in the ward that got back from his mission on Tuesday,
and his family had us over for dinner on Friday so we talked about his
mission and its rules and stuff. Their rules were really relaxed and it
didn't really matter what music they listened to, so long as your
companion and you didn't fight over it. And it was just so weird. I
think before the mission I would have thought that his mission was cool,
but now that I've been in a mission where we focused a lot on
consecrating ourselves and just giving fully into the Lord, I understand
how important that is. I would not be at the spiritual level that I am
at if my mission president didn't expect the best out of us. It was just
very interesting for Sister Burgess and I. We talked about it a lot.
And I definitely want to marry someone who's mission challenged him in
the same where. Where he was able to get to that same spiritual level
that our mission has gotten to. Anyway. That's my soapbox. The cool
thing is that President Bennion said that we're a good mission on
obedience and diligence, so now he wants us to live the higher law and
focus on love and unity. And it does not discredit the first part,
obedience and diligence, but now we need to build upon it. It's really
amazing to have that transition and progression from one to the next. I
love the mission, there's no place I'd rather be!
Love you all,
Sister Smith
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