Light Show

Wow this week has sure been a busy one! We have had some really good lessons and experiences this week. In this area we do family home evening with older couples/empty nesters. So last week we taught them the Book of Mormon and they pretended to be non members/different religions. Which is really cool because a LOT of this ward is made of converts. So that was fun to do a little role playing with the members. This week we will be teaching the Plan of Salvation and hearing their thoughts and insights on this doctrine. Tuesday was a crazy day! We had some really good lessons and good success on Facebook. I have been messaging a lot of people from home and asking them if they know of anyone who needs a message and a few people have given me some names so that has been fun. We also followed up with a family about how their family mission plan is going. It turned into being an awesome discussion and resulted in the mother planning to take us to meet her friend! She said she had to hurry and do it before she chickened out though. So that was so fun! It is fun to see how people work up the faith and courage to do missionary work. It can definitely be hard. I was thinking today about how scared/nervous I was to talk to everyone I saw about the gospel, and how much I have grown. Now I'm actually seeking to find people that I can talk too instead of running away from people ;) haha. So it just takes faith to take that step and start practicing! God will help you. God is disappointed when we don't share this amazing gift that we have. (D&C 60:2-3...I read that this morning when I was thinking about how I have grown and what our responsibility is to share the gospel). Anyway so that was really fun to spend time with that family and help them to be brave and recognize opportunities they have to do missionary work.

The craziest part about Tuesday was the massive Haboob that rolled in! It was actually a little blessing because we were in a member family's neighborhood just looking for more people to visit. We saw another family near by so we decided to talk to them about the family mission plan because we didn't know who they were. When we got in there we soon realized that they were severely less active. They were super nice though and while we were there, the storm rolled in! So we had to stay there for an hour! haha. They wouldn't let us leave because it's dangerous to drive in a massive dust storm like that. The dust was so heavy that we couldn't even see our car parked out front on the street. And you could smell dust in the house that was being blown in through cracks and crevices. haha. Anyway they were really nice and said they would love to feed us sometime this month. They also have two kids above the age of 8 that aren't baptized! ;) haha Apparently they are both converts and the parents are not fond of the church so that is hard. Hopefully we can get them to be more active now. That storm was so crazy though! There was literally lightning on all sides of us. It was amazing. It was like a huge light show all around us. I tried to capture it on video abut it just didn't work too well. We saw some of the craziest/longest lightning bolts I've ever seen in my life though! It was so amazing and super fun to watch! I wish I could just show you cause it was SOOOO cool.

This week we had a lot of good lessons and one day we had miracles happen! We had a bunch of appointments set up right after weekly planning so we didn't have time to go home and eat so we just skipped lunch. We wanted to get member present lessons at all of our appointments so we had 2 young women wanting to go on missions, come out with us one right after the other. So we went to our first appointment. This woman was a referral from her father because he was just recently baptized in a different ward. The woman lives in an RV outside a motel. We had to teach her standing up because there wasn't room in the RV. She sat on her bed and we stood in the tiny, tiny kitchen. Midway through the Restoration, her friend crammed in there with us. At the end of the lesson we asked the first woman if she would be baptized when she knows this is true and she said Yes! Then her friend said she would also like to learn more and wanted to read the pamphlets we have. They said they would come to church that week and would bring their husband/fiance too. So that was exciting! We then took another young woman out and our appointment we were supposed to have cancelled on us, so we just taught a mini lesson on her doorstep and turned it into a teaching opportunity. We decided to just make some rounds in the trailer park to some of our people to check on them. One guy had come to church last week but hadn't talked to us since so we were a little worried about that. But we swung by and he was outside so we talked to him about church and how he felt and such. We had a really good lesson on what it was like to feel the spirit. As we were finishing with a prayer, his friend walked up and said he wanted to learn more. He wanted to know what made Mormons different and said he had time to have a lesson right then. So we went inside and taught him the Restoration. He really liked it and he had some good questions. He said he wanted to come to church and check it out. So we got two lessons there! Then we went and saw a man and his 13 year old daughter. The daughter is super cute and outgoing. They have been saying for a few weeks that they want to come to church. However, they were robbed last week so they didn't come, but they promised they would come this week. We had a good discussion with them as well. Soooo we had a lot of really good lessons and already had 5 member presents in the span of 3 hours! WOO! That is SO good. Later that night we also stopped by a part member family. The husband fell away because of bad experiences about 12 years ago and the wife has taken lessons online/facebook 2 years ago. They were super nice and they have a 9 month old little girl. They are also really busy, but the wife said she would be willing to take the lessons again! WOO! So we are really excited for that as well. Hopefully we can find a time to pin them down :) So a lot of good lessons this week and many fun times :)

Sister W and I just get along really well and we have a lot of fun together. So by the end of the week, we had about 12 people that said they would come to church hopefully. So that would have been super awesome if they all showed up! BUT, only the father and daughter came. It was probably best though because we were able to give them some good attention and they loved it! Especially the daughter. We had a super awesome family of girls take her to young womens and after church they were all hugging her and she was having a really great time. She said she would be going to mutual this week with them too! The dad even said he liked it and would like to get a manual for the classes. GOOD SIGNS! :) We told them we would come by and teach them some lessons that will help them be prepared for church. They haven't had any of the lessons because they are just looking for something different and wanted to come to church to test it out. Oh ya! Getting people to church can be so hard, but they are really excited about it! It was so awesome. :)

We have been focusing on getting referrals this week because we need new, solid people to teach. We were able to get a couple but not able to teach them quite yet, so hopefully this week we can do that with the members!We have found that the key to helping the members really is following up with them so they realize that this is a for real thing, not just drop it off and they forget about it. Just like Elder Ballard's talk in General Conference, we have to follow up with the people we talk to as well! So if you are doing missionary work, you have to follow up! :) So I'm excited for what the rest of this transfer holds :) Have a good week!