President
Bennion has emphasized the importance of member missionary work. Instead
of leaving a random dinner thought with families, we're asked to role
play with them and have a lesson with them from the Preach My Gospel
lessons. It's been truly amazing and extremely uplifting and spiritual.
My first night in Sugar Hill we met with a family who already knows
someone they want to invite to FHE in a couple weeks and we role played
with them and they thanked us for doing that with them. Plus, the wife
plays the violin and she played "How Great Thou Art" while I sang, that
was cool. She was a music major at BYU, so she's extremely skilled.
We
had another dinner with a family, whose daughter just got back from her
mission in Germany. We role played with them and the father role played
a friend from work. His friend is agnostic and such, and we went over
prayer and receiving revelation to our prayers, etc. After we were
finished Bro W. said, "I feel like you two did that really well. You
handled my friend and his concerns very well. I almost want you to teach
him." !!! That's how it's supposed to work! He doesn't live in our
area, or even our mission. But, we're building the trust from the
members and that's the whole point.
That
same day we had been tracting and talked to this lady named Denee. She
was so sweet and told us to come back after dinner and we could talk to
her. Then we knocked a few more houses and talked to another, younger
girl named Alyssa and set up a return appointment for the next day. When
we went back to Denee's we originally meant to talk to her about the
Restoration, but she talked about how her brother died recently and
since then she's wondered about the after life and such. She asked
question after question. She's been searching for answers her entire
life. She couldn't set up another appointment, but she gave us her
number and told us to call her a day that we had open and see if we
could drop in that evening. After we left we felt really good about the
experience. She even has a connection to someone that's LDS.
The
next day we had our lesson with Alyssa. She could only do it for 20
minutes but we emphasized prayer. She had never really prayed to her
Heavenly Father before. She'd participated in church prayers and the
prayer over dinner, but that was about it. We talked to her about how
much Heavenly Father wants to hear from us and He cares about EVERYONE,
we just have to begin praying to Him to actually know he's there. She
prayed by the end of the lesson and we asked her how she felt, she said
that it felt really good. We gave her an assignment from the Book of
Mormon on prayer and told her to practice her prayers. We're meeting
with her again tomorrow. It's so cool because I don't think she ever
realized how important she is to God. Truly it's a blessing to be a part
of people's lives in that aspect, helping them discover spiritual
things that people don't really talk about. It's beautiful.
Then,
on Saturday we were trying to find these two less actives. Their
address was recorded 940, but we couldn't find it. The numbers went from
920, 930, 950, 960. 940 was completely skipped. We sat there and
laughed for a minute, almost deciding to call it a day and go somewhere
else. Then we thought we should knock on 950 and ask them about the
address. We knock on the door, a lovely lady with a Liberian accent
opens the door. She talks to us, then we ask if "such-and-such and
so-and-so" are there. She says, "Yes! This is where they live. They're
not here right now, but come on in from the sun." We talk to her and she
talks about she loves missionaries and she knows that Joseph Smith is a
true prophet because the Spirit of God was in the room when the
missionaries taught her about it. Then she said, "I don't know why the
missionaries haven't come in a while, but they haven't." I guess it's
been a couple years or so since they have come. She also had a 9 year
old daughter that is super eager to be baptized. Apparently this is her
favorite church and she loves the Book of Mormon even though she really
hasn't read it. We set up an appointment with them and we'll be seeing
them on Wednesday.
Anyway, I
love it here. We have seen so many random miracles and have been so
blessed! I'm so thankful to be a missionary and to be able to experience
moments like these. At home I would never have the chance to be so
immersed in missionary work, and now I get that opportunity. I love it.
Love you all so much!
Sister Smith
No comments:
Post a Comment