Since I don't have much time I"m going to copy and paste my letter to president. Except it got erased. Ugh. Oh well.
Here is what we did this week:
Monday: I got over my bratty attitude about half way through the day. Sorry it tainted my email last week.... I got to see Sister Luft again :) She was with Miranda. They came and hung out at our apartment as we cleaned. We went to play volleyball with the zone. That was fun. But the best part of the evening came that night.
Quite a few weeks ago Sister Luft and I had met this beautiful middle eastern couple from Jerusalem. They talked to us on the street. The wife was dressed in the traditional clothing and was beautiful. She didn't say much as she didn't know much English. They were about to have a baby. They invited us to come over to where they were staying when she was born to see her. We of course said that we would. They gave us their contact info and he said he would call when their little girl was here. As they walked away we commented to each other how they looked just like Joseph and Mary, just before Christ was born. It was cool.
Well a few weeks ago I got a call from him. Their little girl was here and they wanted us to come see her. So last Monday we headed over to the little hotel they were staying at (It was out of our area so we had to do it during pday). We met him outside their room and he showed us in. Their baby was beautiful. It was amazing to feel the Spirit there so strongly. They had previously expressed that they weren't interested in the Church. So we sat and talked. They were so sweet! As we were leaving I thought of a scripture that Mom had us memorize. Psalms 127:3.-Children are an heritage of the Lord. We shared that scripture, bore testimony of the divinity of the family, and said goodbye.
We were off to teach Gilda and Ruby :) Remember them? We met them, Kuka, and Bro Walk at the Church.
We taught them about the Restoration again. We talked about the Priesthood. They expressed their love for the Savior (Gilda's Mom doesn't speak any english, she just kept telling us that Jesus was Jewish haha). We invited them to be baptized and they said that they would pray about it. The Spirit was so strong! IT was amazing.
Tuesday: Transfers! Except we didn't really transfer. We just helped with the 3 sisters who are whitewashing Sister King's old ward. We met with the zone leaders and district leaders in our zone. One of the things I love about being a sister training leader is that I get to participate in so many trainings and meetings where I learn so much. Pretty much this calling was to help me become better. It's awesome. We discussed a lot of good things, things that we wanted to accomplish this transfer. The rest of the day was pretty ordinary.
Funny story of the night: We wanted to visit a less active while we were in the area. We had never met her before and since I've been here for a while we've probably tried by about 30 times. But we hadn't tried in the past couple months so we decided to try by before we headed to our next apt. WE pulled up. Her car was there and her gate was open. That was a good sign. We rang the doorbell and waited. Nobody answered. So we knocked and waited. Finally we heard footsteps. I was so excited! A woman opened the door, saw us, and screamed! Sister King then screamed and the woman shut the door. In a second she opened it again and apologized. Apparently she didn't hear the bell or the knock and was coming to shut her gate. It was...hilarious. And we finally met her :)
Wednesday: The morning/afternoon was pretty regular. That night we taught Lesta. I love her! As we were studying that morning and I was reviewing her teaching record I had the thought to talk about tithing. We didn't have time to plan her lesson that morning. So that night we decided to read with her Elder Bednar's talk from conference. We sat down and talked with her about her trip. And then we told her that we were going to talk about tithing. And she was shocked. She said that she has been thinking and praying about tithing a lot since we found her. She could hardly believe that we really were going to talk about tithing and that we really didn't spy on her prayers :) It is amazing to know that the Lord answers prayers :)
That night we drove out to Long Beach per President's request to talk to him. It was raining (crazy) and they had just picked up Elder Packer. So we got to meet him :) It was good.
Thursday: We gave a training on our vision in zone meeting. And then we had to leave early to go help with lunch for the zone conference for the other half of the mission (ours was the next day). Later that afternoon (after weekly planning) we had a lesson with a member referral. It was awful! It was pretty much a 2 hr long lesson where he was trying to bash and we were trying to not bash back and to teach. Even the Bishop (who was with us) got pretty frustrated haha. But hopefully some good will come of that lesson.
Friday: We had our zone conference with Elder Packer. It was AMAZING!! I was so inspired. Sister Packer talked about keeping the Spirit with you. Elder Packer talked a lot about how to teach. How to be a leader. How to use family history in missionary work. It was awesome.
Saturday: Crazy day. We taught Daniel that night. It was a good lesson. He committed to reading the BoM 5 minutes every night. He even texted us that night to tell us that he did it. Wahooo!!
Sunday: This is the miracle day. I had it all written out to President but it got deleted. But I'll tell the abbreviated story here. Do you remember when I told you about Sheri and her girls last week? Well we've been trying to teach them all week and nothing was working out. All our high hopes had kind of crashed and we were pretty discouraged in relation to them. But on Sunday we were pretty sure they were coming to Church. We texted them that morning...and no response. Sacrament meeting started and none of the 5 investigators we thought were going to be at church showed up. We were pretty bummed. But about half way through sacrament meeting we glanced at the phone and realized that we had missed several texts from them.
We are on our way
We came but couldn't find anyone so we went home.
Ah!! I thought about it for about one second and realized that I couldn't just let it be until next week. I grabbed a member (one of the sister ward missionaries) and asked her to leave sacrament meeting with me to go pick up an investigator. I was determined that at least one of them would be at church that week. I explained it all to Stephanie as we headed out of the Church. We drove over and picked up the 12 year old and brought her to Church. She loved it. After Church we went back over. We really wanted to teach them. That day the attitude Sheri had towards us was completely changed. She invited us in and told us a about her desires and conversion. It was beautiful. We sat down on the ground with the 3 girls, gave them each a book of Mormon, and taught them about the gospel through the pictures in the front. They were so excited. We talked about Christ, about Lehi and his family, about the Gospel, about Baptism. They were so excited to tell us that they hadn't been baptized yet but that they really wanted to be. With their Mom's approval we set a date for all three of them to baptized the week before Christmas. It was amazing.
This Gospel is so true. I am so grateful for it. Miracles still happen.
Have a beautiful Thanksgiving!
Love,
Sister Andelin
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