Hey everyone! It's been a while since I wrote because we've just been crazy busy, but things are going great over here! I can't write about everything, so I'll just share two or three of the cooler stories from the week.
So, last Monday we had a fantastic lesson with Manny and Faye. We've been working with them for a while, and they've been reading the Book of Mormon, but we were thinking it would help them to talk about who God is, how we can communicate with Him, and how we can hear and understand when He speaks back. We just focused the whole lesson on that, and it went extremely well. It was probably the most Spirit led lesson I've had on my mission so far. Everything just flowed really well and they understand what they need to do to grow closer to Jesus Christ now. The Lord was definitely giving us the words we needed to say, because there were parts where I wasn't really sure how to tie things together, but I just said a prayer in my heart and opened my mouth and was able to say exactly what I needed to say. We should be having another lesson with them tonight, so we're excited to talk to them.
We also had a really good experience doing some Sunday finding a week or so ago. We went to an apartment complex, and it was essentially the city of Ammonihah. Aside from one person who gave us some water, every single person we talked to was very unhappy to see us. We got barked at, yelled at, sworn at, and someone even hit me with their screen door, it was pretty crazy. But, the really neat thing was that we never let ourselves get angry or discouraged. Elder Hart pulled out a scripture from the Book of Mormon and said, "Hey, charity suffereth long. That's us right now., we're suffering long." So we just laughed it off and kept going onto the next person. And the next person. And eventually we did the whole complex and went to a different complex that was right next door. It was like night and day, we talked to so many awesome people, sent a referral to the Spanish missionaries, set up an a couple return visits with people, and it was just great all around. I remember being super grateful that we hadn't let ourselves get angry or discouraged, because if we were angry we wouldn't have been able to feel the Spirit and it wouldn't have gone nearly as well.
It's looking pretty long, but I'll share one more because it was great. So right after the priesthood session on Saturday we went out to try and visit someone Elder Boss and I met a little while back. While walking over there, we saw two people loading a U-Haul, so we walked down to see if we could help out. At first they said they didn't need our help, then one of them named Fabian asked us if all we were doing was wandering around trying to help people out, so we told them that was correct. He considered for a second, then told us we could go and move a dresser for them. They wanted us to move it with all of the clothes and everything in there, so it was quite a chore, but we got it over and into the truck. Once that was loaded up we started to talk to them by the truck. They had a lot of good questions and one of them told us that he had talked to missionaries like us before, but he hadn't liked them as much because they just started preaching to them right away, but he really respected us because the first thing we did was ask if we could help them out. Long story short, we were able to contact the missionaries where Fabian was moving to and they helped us unload the truck over there. They got his information and they are going to go back this week to share more of our message. The whole experience made me think of Elder Uchtdorf's talk from conference where he talked about sharing the restored gospel. Elder Uchtdorf said one of the greatest things we can do to share the gospel is to live it the very best that we can. As we try to follow the Savior's teachings, people will notice the difference, just like Fabian and his friend did. Then, if we pay attention and listen to the Spirit, we will have opportunities to share with them why we do what we do, which is always a big blessing.
That's not all that we did, but I don't want to make this email too much longer, so I'll call it good right there. I hope everyone got some things that they can take home and apply from conference this weekend, I sure did. I know that this really is Jesus Christ's church and I know that those men are called by God to lead it. I hope you all have an awesome week this week!
