someone wants to talk to you

March 8

Well…I’m sitting at the library writing this email while the keys to our car sit comfortably in the trunk of our corolla. Sigh. This wouldn’t really be that big of a deal, but it’s the second time this week we’ve locked our keys in the trunk…I wrote a list of things I wanted to write about this week…but it’s in the trunk, so who knows what I’ll write about. I’m excited to see.

Last Monday was one of the worst days of my mission and looking back I’m trying to remember exactly why it affected my so terribly. We are working with an amazing woman named Wendy. She’s our best investigator right now. She studies everything we tell her to and she makes us food. She’s happily married to a police officer and she’s got three adorable children under 5. Wendy is amazing. Well, last week we made Wendy cry…and they weren’t good tears. It was a big misunderstanding, but basically we were idiots…mostly me… and we said some things that were pretty offensive. There’s no point going to go into it because it’s trivial now, but it was terrible. I felt like the scum of the earth. It wasn’t even that bad, but I’m a missionary. We shouldn’t be offensive or defensive, we should be the perfect examples of a disciple of Christ---and we aren’t! I have never been so aware of my inadequacies as I am as a missionary which seems really paradoxical, but it’s true. Ugh. The worst part was feeling like I had shattered her chances of having a fair opportunity to hear the gospel, which I realize is dumb. Her salvation does not rest on my stupidity, but still it makes you wonder…why does the Lord send us out when we seem to be hurting the work more than helping it?! Blah. All I could think of this whole last week wanted to send a huge airplane flyer message thing throughout the world that says, “In behalf of all the Mormons who stay and do dumb things when they should be representing the Lord in all things and in all places, I’m Sorrrrrrrrryyyyyyy!!!!!!!!” I was so afraid that she would be one of those people who years down the road missionaries would knock at her door and she’d respond, ‘I’ve talked to you people before and I don’t really think you represent Christ very well so obviously your church must not be His church.’ We wrote Wendy a little note to say sorry last week and this Saturday we showed up at her door with a little bag of starbursts and a hand written paper of the answers to some of her questions that we weren’t able to answer when we had talked to her last. As soon as she opened the door she smiled, “Hi! I just made cookies! You must have smelled them!” We just stood there eyes-wide and shaking. “Come on in!” As we walked in past her she smiled, “Don’t I get a hug?” oh man. It’s moments like that where I get a glimpse of judgment day and the relief that will come because of Christ’s mercy. Wendy is truly a good example of being Christ-like. We apologized again and gave her the starbursts and she appreciated it. We appreciated her. So, we’re back of okay-ish terms with Wendy. It’s interesting how we are called in our weakness. Wendy strengthened and taught us with her example and we have the privilege of sharing the restored gospel with her. I have been very blessed because of my investigators.

Right now the biggest struggle in missionary work is helping our investigators get to church. For weeks now we have not been able to help anyone get to church even though we are teaching a lot of people. It has been hard for me. I know people have their agency, but I can be doing more. This week we went around on Saturday and invited all of our investigators to church and we called our ward missionaries and asked them to fast and pray that our investigators would be blessed with circumstances and with an abundance of the spirit necessary to overcome any fears or inconveniences of coming to church. Church started and not one person showed up…again. I was ready to burst into tears but I didn’t because that would be weird. I kept thinking of things I could do better to help more people come to church. I know it is their decision and I only have control over me so I was formulated what I could say and do better this next week and I frankly felt terrible. Suddenly, in walked Mary Flemming. We’ve been trying to get her to Church for six weeks now! She stayed for 15 minutes!!!!!! But then she left cause I can’t remember but something came up, but she came!!!! At the end of church Brian Foote, a recent RM came up to us and said, “Cydni Gardner has a friend that wants to talk to you.” We to 18 year old Cydni and she said that her friend once jokingly said she wanted the missionaries to come to her door. So we went to her door and she was so excited. Her name is Riley. We have an appointment with her and all her Mormon friends are coming. Oh goody. I am super excited. Blessings. Blessings. The Lord loves me and He answers my prayers. I trust that. It is always an exciting ride to see how he decides to answer them.

A few weeks ago we contacted a guy at ‘The Estates.’ An apartment complex where a ton of our investigators live so are there all the time. He is a maintance worker for the Estates and the first time we met him he said he wasn’t interested. The second time we saw him we forgot that we had talked to him and this time his wife and three kids were out waiting to take him home. We talked to them and got their info…they lived outside their area, which was a bummer, but this family was amazing so we didn’t care that we wouldn’t be the ones teaching them. The third time we saw him at the apartment complex we gave him a Book of Mormon. A couple days later we got a message from the Stone Oak elders thanking us for finding the Perez family. They said that they had had one of the best lessons of their missions with the family and they were going to church. We were so excited. As a missionary sometimes you are blessed to be part of the entire experience of finding and teaching and baptizing, but usually you just get to be part of snippets…missionary work is not about us having cool experiences, its about us learning that we are not serving OUR mission, but HIS mission. We come and go almost anonymously. Hardly anyone will remember us, but being remembered isn’t the point—in fact were trying to forget ourselves completely and focus on our brothers and sisters. It is a trying, but beautiful experience