On
Tuesday we had an appointment scheduled with a family for 8 pm. The
husband called us last Sunday and asked if we could come at 7 instead
and wondered if we were bringing an investigator. We said that 7 worked
and that we would not have an investigator with us (though, of course,
we'd love it if we did!). Tuesday we show up and the house looks dark...
Hmmm that's funny. Then we go up, there's no cars on the driveway.
Okay. Then we knock on the door and it sounds like the knock
reverberates through the entire front end of the house, like there's no
furniture or anything in there. So we decide to call the family, ask if
maybe they've changed addresses. We call and he laughs. He says, "Oh no.
We moved to the Lawrenceville ward recently. I thought you might be the
Sisters in our old ward. Well, maybe the Lord needs you in that
neighborhood." That got me thinking that we should tract there just in
case. We decided to just tract for 30 minutes. And thus we begin our
door knocking. It's been about 30 minutes, no one really promising, but
we've got two more houses left on the street and say, "What the heck?
We'll just finish the street, there's just two more houses." At the last
door we decided to knock on, a young high school aged kid answers. He
says that his family would be interested and that his mom would be back
in 30 minutes and we could come by then. We say thank you, visit a
member in the neighborhood for a short bit and return. His mom answers
and asks where the church is. We inform her and she got excited saying
that she's sure the Lord sent us. They just moved from Ohio and they've
been looking for a home church. When we told her that we were on
missions for 18 months and we're from out West she got the chills. It
was so amazing! She promised that she and her son would come to church
on Sunday. I was on cloud 9 the entire night!
Wednesday
something similar happened. Our dinner forgot she was feeding us, but
beforehand we had gone tracting and met a lady who was shockingly open!
She said that we could come back on Saturday.
Unfortunately
neither one of them followed through. I have come to learn that God
does in fact love His children. As His servants, He tries to reach out
to them through us, but they have the decision to either accept the
message we share or reject. It's sad because usually if we're in the
right place at the right time, the person feels the Spirit and knows
we're messengers of the Lord. But life gets in the way and the adversary
subtly stops their Spiritual progression.
On
Saturday we had a lesson with Lauren that was probably one of the most
powerful ones I've had on the mission. We had prayed to know a date that
she should prepare to be baptized and we both felt that we should ask
her to be baptized on November 1st. We taught her the Gospel of Jesus
Christ after giving her a tour of the church. She was open, the spirit
was felt, all was well. Then, we told her that we had prayed for her and
wanted to know a date that she should be baptized. We asked her if she
would like to make a goal to be baptized on November 1st. At first she
seemed a little surprised at how soon the date was, then she smiled and
said, "Yes. I will prepare for that." Then we asked her if she would
kneel with us then and pray to know if that's the right date for her to
be baptized. We knelt and she gave the most spiritually sweet prayer.
She began pouring a sincerely heartfelt prayer. She asked to be worthy
to be baptized on Nov 1st. Then she explained that she wanted to share
this message with her family and friends and her FUTURE family! I almost
started tearing up a bit. Her future family! That's amazing!!!!!!!! She
knows that when she should be baptized. Moments like those are why I'm
on a mission. They are so fulfilling and indescribable. It was humbling
as well because she actually lives in Roswell, so we had to refer her to
the Roswell Sisters. This work is not my work, this is the Lord's work.
I don't even care that we had to refer her. We had three extremely
spiritual, uplifting and powerful lessons with her and the other sisters
just have to teach the rest and prepare her for baptism. Honestly, I'm
just happy that she's found truth and she feels it. Truly elect. She was
totally fine with being taught by the other Sisters, which I love
because that means she's converted to the doctrine, not the
missionaries. So cool. Anyway. I reflected on her prayer for the rest
of the day and the next.
I love being a
missionary. It is extremely rewarding. It was terribly hard, but so
worth it. One of our Assistants came to our district meeting yesterday
and he gave an amazing training. One of the Apostles created this
inverted pyramid of missionaries and their vision. It starts off with
their Call, then Routine, then Obedience, then Exact Obedience, then
She/He knows that She/He Knows, then Treasure Up. How it's so much more
than just being obedient, it's about turning over to the Lord and
treasuring up what He's given us. But you have to do the things on the
bottom to be able to achieve greatness, you can't just forget about the
foundation of your learning, etc. It was really good, but he talked
about how good missionaries have hard missions because they worked hard.
So true! But it's such a blessing to do.
Anyway,
Love y'all. It's Fall Y'all (that's some of the decor down here in Georgia when it's fall)
Sister Smith
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