:)

January 25, 2010

This has been an awesomely awesome week! We were on our way to visit a potential and we passed three women who were having a ‘ladies night’ and we were sure that they wouldn’t be interested in a message about Christ, but we talk to everyone we see so we talked to them. And guess what? They weren’t interested just like we expected. We had a nice conversation with one of the ladies who told us about her “Mormon” friend has two wives. “Uhhh…If he has two wives then he’s not Mormon.” “Nope, he’s a Mormon. I’m sure of it. And he has two wives and he is so in love with both of them and the new wife that he just married is super sweet and nice and—” “Okay, well we gotta go.” So we smiled and started to walk away and see our potential investigator and we were so distracted by the conversation we forgot to ask for a referral which we usually do. But suddenly one of the ladies stopped us and said, “y’all should go to that apartment with the light on.”

So we walked up to the apartment and knocked on the door and asked if we could come in and share a message about Christ. Heidi, a sweet, down-to-earth woman in her early 30s, looked down at her happy 8 year old daughter, Alexis, and asked, “Do you want them to come in?” To our excitement the 8 year old smiled and said yes, so we went in and taught them the restoration lesson. Then we came back the next day with Sister Stucki who has kids same age as Heidi’s kids and Sister Stucki took the kids to church that Wednesday to let them play with the scout and achievement day girls. We taught about the Plan of Salvation and Heidi thought it made a lot of sense. This is huge. She’s pregnant and on bed rest which complicates things, but nothing good came cheap. We took dinner over for her and her family and the ward is now going to bring her family dinner every Friday until the baby comes. Coolio.

Next cool story: Saturday is finding day and we weren’t finding anyone. So we started knocking at 8pm to finish up our night. We met a woman and her 20 year old son and they let us in. Her name is Angela and she has no legs because of diabetes and she has little use of her arms. She is very down to earth and has great faith in God and has been looking for a church. We invited her to church and her response was, “How are you going to get me there?” referring to her inability to walk, and the fact that they don’t have a car. “If you want to go to church Angela, we’ll get you there.” So she agreed and we got some members of the ward to come and pick up her heavy wheel/scooter chair, and some to bring her and her son to church. It was awesome! I think she really liked church. She fell asleep during sacrament meeting but who doesn’t? But she and her son really enjoyed gospel principles because our ward missionaries rock. Anyways, it was awesome!

WE also had this boy that we taught a while ago randomly show up for church. He’s dating a less active member, but became interested in the doctrine. He’s about to go to military boot camp and he wanted some religion in his life and mormon doctrine made a lot of sense to him. So he arranged for us to come over and teach him. We invited him to be baptized and he said that he’d probably like to do that. But the following Sunday he couldn’t come because his parents didn’t approve. Blah. He said he’d call us when he could see us again. Well he just randomly showed up to church yesterday and gave us big awkward hugs when he saw us. As we were awkwardly escaping his hug he told us that he was going to into boot camp on Monday (today). WE told him to look for missionaries at the base and to get baptized when he gets there. Wahoo!

Then we had another investigator randomly show up to church. Annette Flechas is married to less active member. Over the last few years the Flechas have pushed away from the ward, but for some reason we stopped by at the right time and things are moving in their lives as to allow for us to teach them . Jaime, Annette’s husband, just had his 17 year old less active daughter move in with him from her mom’s house. He wants to help his daughter so he asked us to come and teach his daughter and he annouced that he would be coming to church. We invited Annette, but she said she had work so she couldn’t come. But come Sunday, she and Jaime woke up early and drove to her work to check her schedule and she fould out she could at least make the first meeting. So in walks Annette, Jaime, and his daughter! Sister Hill and I were dying. Best day ever.

One more story: This is Super cool!

I called Sister Dodge (my companion in Pleasanton who is still serving in Pleasanton) to ask her some things. After I was finished she said, “I’m glad you called because I wanted to tell you something. Janie came to church today and she brought her daughter faith.”

Background:

When Sister Dodge and I were in Pleasanton we worked sooooooooooo hard. We had two baptisms together which were awesome, but we also had a ton of heartache because of the dozens of other people who fell through. It was hard. One of the disappointments was having Janie reject the gospel. The sisters before us knocked into her but they could never get a hold of her again. But Sister Dodge and I were able to get a hold of her and we taught her the lessons. She had issues with every single commandment. We poured out our souls to her telling her that she would be happy if she would just let go of all these sins. I’ve never been so bold with any investigator like I was with her. She came to church a few times, but just couldn’t change. She knew what she was doing was wrong, but she didn’t want to give up the lifestyle because it was fun and exciting to her. She didn’t want to go to our church because we expected her to give up her sins and become a new person. Pride. We’ve all had issues with pride before. We rely on our own wisdom more than God’s. Pride is nothing more than self-inflicted pain. We loved her so much, but she was tripping herself up and it was so sad to watch her and her kids suffer.

We had one last lesson with her last October where we just bore our souls to her about how she needed to change. Sister Dodge told her that her goal should be to marry someone for eternity and commit herself completely to that person. She deserved fidelity and eternal love and she was capable of fidelity and eternal love. We told her about the spiritual and physical damage that comes with putting harmful substances into your body. We put everything out there and invited her to be baptized….but she couldn’t do it….she couldn’t do it, because she didn’t want to.

So we left. We told her we loved her and told her how to get in touch with us if she was ever ready to change. We walked out of there thinking that nothing had sunk in. We thought that everything we said just bounced off her conscience. But we were wrong. I’m not sure what followed in the months to come, but she told Sister Dodge that one day she woke up and had a huge desire to change. She wanted to be a better person. She immediately exclaimed, “Where’s my book?” She dug through her stuff until she found the Book of Mormon we had given her. She read every reading assignment we had given her. She pulled her 9 year old daughter, Faith, out of catholic school (Janie wouldn’t let her come to church with us because she wanted Faith to be catholic). Janie felt like Faith should decide for herself what religion to join. Then Janie talked to her mom about our church and her mom gave her blessing for Janie to go to the Mormon Church. Her mom said, “we all worship one God. It doesn’t matter which church you go to” (I usually hate hearing that comment for obvious reasons, but in this case I was super happy!)

So she decided to go to Church because she was ready to change. Sister Dodge must have fallen off her horse when she saw Janie at church (if she was sitting on a horse). Sister Dodge hadn’t talked to Janie since she and I had spoken to her almost three months before so this was huge!!!!

All I have to say is that I have faith that people can change. She was the last person I would have thought to change in this short amount of time, but Christ’s Atonment and His spirit can work miracles. Don’t give up on anyone who is holding on to self-destructive sins and thought processes (including yourself). Change is possible! Happy day.