Remember Ebony, the 7-year-old little friend of Kaila? We finally got to meeting Natalie, her mother. Natalie asked us what we teach and we got to introduce her to the message of the Restoration. She was a little suspicious at first but we showed her how it's what was taught from the beginning of time, but that it's been fragmented and lost, but restored now, and now Ebony tells us that her mom likes it and wants to come to church. Ebony said the sweet sweet sweestest prayer, thanking God that her mom could learn about Jesus Christ and asking that she could learn more and come to church and have fun and see that church is a fun place to learn.
Also, Brother Gallardo in our ward brought a new family to church--this was the second Sunday in a row. The father of this family, John, grew up with Brother Gallardo (Luis). They're both Chilean. John had the discussions about six years ago kind of as a favor to Luis but wasn't interested really. This time John called Luis and asked him if he could come and they've been talking a lot. Luis told John he's going to have to turn the matter over to us. Sister Erickson and I taught the Sunday School lesson on Sunday (the lesson was the Fall of Adam--kind of an intense topic if it gets out of hand, but it didn't, and we centered it on how through Christ's Atonement we can be redeemed from the effects of the Fall). When we asked if anyone has any questions, John said, "I don't have any questions. I just want to know more." I told him he's in luck because he was talking to the Church's professional teachers of nonmembers :) John has a wife, Maria, and four children. It's just perfect. This is the way it's supposed to happen. We're SO excited to teach them tomorrow evening. We think about them all the time.
Early this week we also taught Betty. She's 74. When she opened the door to our knock, she looked at Sister Erickson and announced that they already knew each other. (They didn't.) I've been learning (as we all are throughout our lives) how to recognize direction from the Spirit. One of the ways it works with me is I see myself doing something. I hadn't done it for a while, but I recited "I saw a pillar of light..." and I felt it, and I'm pretty sure she did. That was the first time we met her. This week we came in and taught her the plan of salvation. We got only as far as the pre-earth life and that we all lived with God before we came here and she said whenever she talks about these things she feels an energy going through her. It was such an awesome lesson. And true to the commitments we made to President Lindley at zone conference (I'll explain in a minute), we used the word "baptism" and rather than saying she didn't want to, or she already has, or another common thing that disappoints us, she said she's not ready. That's fine, we can help her get ready. Betty is so wonderful; she's 74 years old but doesn't share the common assumption many of her age have that she's too old to change, too old to learn. She recognizes that her life isn't over yet and has recently decided to take back the control of her life that she has often allowed others to have. I love that, we'll help her regain freedom.
Oh. We had another couple of super hot, super humid days. I'm in the mode of rediscovering the joys of summer.
One of the elders gave us a CD that has only one song on it that we think is acceptable for missionaries to listen to. It's called "Healing Waters." We put it in on Saturday and I put it on repeat because we didn't want to listen to the others. I wondered, just for fun, whether we could stand listening to it all day long. We did, and we listened to the same song through Sunday and Monday until district meeting Tuesday morning. It helped me get really excited about baptisms.
We saw an echidna while driving the other day. We pulled over and took photos of it. They're so cute and poky. Ha... but it curls up as soon as you approach it. I can't see that being much of a defense, except that it looks really spiny.
Zone conference happened on Wednesday last week, which is why I was on the email a day early. We made the following commitments to President Lindley and to Elder Catton, one of the assistants to the president.
1. Use in our teaching the DVDs that President Sybrowsky gave us. It has four talks from the October 2007 conference--Elder Ballard's "Facts, faith, family, fruits" about members' responsibility to define ourselves and to prevent misunderstandings; Elder Nelson's "Scriptural witnesses" about the purpose of the Book of Mormon"; Elder Holland's MASTERPIECE about the Godhead "The only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent"; President Hinckley's last General Conference address "The stone cut out of the mountain" http://lds.org/conference/
2. Assign investigators 15 chapters from the Book of Mormon to read in one week in a power reading challenge, after which they need to pray to know that the Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ
3. Read the Book of Mormon daily
4. Use at least the word "baptism" in every lesson [We've been doing this, and it actually makes the work a lot more fun, engaging, and effective]
5. If we're not good at anything else, become really good at inviting people to be baptised. Practice by role plays and study about the blessings of baptism during companion study
6. Plan lessons for every dinner appointment we have with members, and come with an objective, something to accomplish
Also at zone conference President Lindley played "If I were a rich man" from Fiddler on the Roof just for this one line about if he were rich, Tevyeh could sit in the synagogue and read scriptures for seven hours a day. He gave us this quote from Elder Holland about becoming God's investigator. It's really helped my study.
I have officially memorized both The Living Christ and The Family: A Proclamation to the World. I got a sticker for it from my companion. :)
Today for p-day we went to the temple. Sister Lindley organized for all of us to go to her Chinese investigator's milk bar (convenience store) and show the DVD with President Hinckley. Sister Zhang, from mainland China, shared her testimony and conversion story. The investigator, George, told her he knows it's true. He has a baptism goal date for next Friday. After that we all went to the mission home and made lunch and played games. I'm really impressed by several of the elders. I wonder how I can have children like them someday......... agh!!!!!!!!!!
Speaking of someday, I need to find a job and a future. Any ideas?
Thanks for your readership, O little audience!
:)
Love you heaps ;)
Sister Savanna
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