The Ability to Wait
Hello and Happy Labor Day!
I hope you are all having a fantastic day and that you had a great week. This week was hands down the best week I have ever had! I have been serving in Saint Helena and the surrounding areas for 10 weeks and we have seen success but we have not been able to teach a very large number of lessons and we have not found new investigators for a while. However, this week everything changed. The ground started shaking and this area caught fire!
It all stared on Monday night. P-day ends at 6 and we had appointments at 6,7 and 8. Usually we are not even to 3 lessons on Thursday so we were so excited! We had dinner at our Branch Presidents house and two less active members were there so we taught them a lesson together after dinner. We showed the Mormon Message called Continue in Patience with the marshmallow experiment. They loved it and were really touched by it.
Then we were off to our next appointment and she was not home. We were discouraged but decided to go contacting but then after contacting one person we decided that we needed to go try a potential investigator named Consuelo who we had met a couple weeks ago. We stopped by her house and she was home and let us in. We had a wonderful lesson with her about how the gospel blesses families and the importance of the Book of Mormon and prayer. She still feels tied to her catholic beliefs but she has a desire to learn more about our church.
Then we were off to our next appointment with Gilberto and Eva. Oh my gosh they are the best! When we got their Eva was not home but Gilberto was and we explained to him that we can't come in unless there is another woman present. He loved that we had this rule which is unusual because Hispanic men have a hard time understanding this. Eva came home and we taught them about the plan of salvation. They had a few fears about the judgement day but we explained that because of the atonement we do not need to worry about getting in trouble at the judgement bar. Other than that they just absolutely loved the plan of salvation. When we talked about the celestial kingdom and how baptism is one of the requirements to live in this kingdom it just seemed so natural to invite them to be baptized and so of course we did. The spirit was so strong and they said that baptism is something they are thinking about but that they do not feel ready. We testified that we are here to help prepare them and that we know that baptism is what God wants them to do. Then Gilberto said' "Well if I am preparing to be baptized then I need to come to church on Sunday". We were so excited! Then we ended our lesson and were about to leave when they pulled out homemade doughnuts and 7-up. One thing you need to know about the Hispanic culture is that when they give you food it is a sign that they really love you! So we happily excepted the treats. We left that lesson jumping for joy because we had just taught 3 lessons in a row and two of our investigators are so so so close to a baptismal date. We had waited so long for a day like this and it finally came!
Side note: Gilberto did not come to church but saying that you will go is the first step. Hopefully he will come this Sunday!
This week we also learned a lot more about our devices. The area book and planner application is really neat. We basically never use our paper planners. It is all a little difficult because we do not have wi-fi in our apartment to sync the information or to use the internet so we are at the church a lot but that is ok. This week I have been able to contact many friends from high school and we have tried 2 times to have a skype lesson with one of my cousins. Nothing huge is coming from our online work but we know that we will see miracles soon.We had a great meeting with the Elders who have been called to supervise all of the online work and they taught us what we can do to find local online investigators. Right now everyone we contact are friends from home so this week we are going to expound our online investigators. Some of the ideas they suggested is going to contact around high schools when they get out and trying to get facebook contacts. The other idea is to find local restaurants, libraries and other stores facebook pages and make comments or post videos to those pages. It is all new and a little scary but we are going to try these ideas as well as really try to get our members on board with the technology as well.
We had English class this week and all of our regular students were there and one lady came in saying she couldn't come to that class but she would come to the next one. It is so just so fun to help these wonderful people and every week we have little chances to share the gospel. This week we are also starting to teach our members Spanish at the same time so that will be fun!
We had so many great lessons this week. We picked up another new investigator named Delma but then 2 days later we stopped teaching her because we realized that all she really wanted to do was argue. In one year of doing this I have not had too many experiences of arguing with people but this lady cut me off mid sentence and said that she did not think President Monson was called of God or that he was a worthy man. I was so mad but instead of yelling at her I testified so powerfully and then Hermana Zimmerman testified even more powerfully and we told her that if she did not want to act on the things we were teaching it would be a waste of our time. She politely told us not to come back and then we left. It was one of the harder things but coolest things I have ever done!
We also taught our investigator Carina that we had not seen in like 3 weeks and we had a very good lesson with her. It was a fantastic week! We taught a total of 8 lessons and we have never taught more than 5! So it was great and most importantly we helped so many people come closer to Christ. It was has been such a rewarding feeling knowing that we have done all that we could.
Also this week we had interviews with President and President did my entire interview in Spanish! Usually it starts out Spanish and then he switches but he never switched. I am really growing up as a missionary and it is scary. I want to do this forever and I can! This week I have realized that through my mission Heavenly Father is really testing my ability to wait or aka my patience. There are certain things that I really want to see happen or things that I want to know but Heavenly Father is having me wait! I know that He is trying to teach that as I am patient and continue to have faith and obey everything will workout! I think that he is trying to teach me that this journey and these things I am waiting for are going to carry through for the rest of my life. I will always be a missionary! You are all missionaries! Don't wait any longer to receive the blessings that will come form sharing the gospel. They are so great. I would like to invite you all to go to the Hastening the Work of Salvation page on lds.org and watch the video Missionary Mindset. It is so good and hopefully it will help you get into the missionary mindset. Also if you know of anyone who I can teach online. Let me know! You can message me referrals only on facebook. We can't be friends but my facebook is Hermana Hillary Andrews.
Go out and share the gospel!
Love you!
Hermana Hillary
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