For God So Loves all of His Children that He Sent Me!
Hello hello! Well transfers have come and gone and I am now serving with the wonderful Hermana Whiteley! She is from Middleton, Idaho which is near Boise, she is 19 years old and she has been on her mission for 5 months. This is her second area and she is a very hard working missionary.
Well this week has been interesting! To welcome Hermana Whiteley to Santa Rosa I got the flu! I started out having a bad cold and then on Friday I got the flu! In the words of the mission nurse Sister Stewart "Sister you have the flu so stay away from people and tell your companion to watch herself. She is next". Hahaha! So that is exactly what we did! All day Saturday we stayed away from people and I slept practically all day! I am feeling better and Hermana Whiteley has a little cold and we are hoping she does not get the flu. So that was a fun way to start this transfer but nonetheless we have been seeing miracles.
Before transfers I had a neat opportunity on facebook. A little while ago I was going through my friend requests and I saw that I had one from a lady named Tina and we had a mutual friend. The mutual friend was Alba, one of the less active members that I worked with in Fairfield (my first area). Tina happens to be Alba's younger sister and she is really interested in learning about the church. I have taught her twice on facebook and this week she started asking me questions about things that we believe in and what we do at our church so I asked her if she would like to go to church. She told me that she lives right next to the church in Concord, California (which is kind of by Oakland) and she went once and she liked it a lot better than the catholic church. I then testified that the reason why she liked it a lot better is because our church is the only true church on the earth. I promised her that she would feel the Spirit at church. It was a powerful lesson and it still blows my mind that it was all done through facebook chat. I do not know if she went to church because we have not had much online time with being sick and all but I hope she did but if not I will just invite her to go next week!
So before I got sick I was able to participate in Zone Meeting! We have two brand new zone leaders, Elder Perez and Elder Waite (new to he area and first time zone leaders) so it has been really fun trying to learn together and figure out what we are supposed to do as leaders to help our zone. We are really trying to help build more unity in our zone so we came up with the idea to do Secret Sisters or Secret Missionaries. Each companion chose another companionships names and then we are supposed to serve that companionship for a week. It has been a lot of fun and I can already feel more love in the Santa Rosa air! I also had the privilege of teaching in Zone Meeting! I taught about our purpose as missionaries and I shared the bible video For God so loved the world to help us remember that we must serve and teach as Christ did. As I was studying I realized that For God so loved the world that He sent His Only Begotten Son but also For God so loves all of His children that He sends missionaries out to share the gospel. This hit me so hard and helped me remember that I am here serving as a missionary to share God's love with all His children and to bring them back to Him! Then today when I was thinking about sharing this with all of you I thought God loves all of His children so he has sent each and everyone of us to help teach the rest of His children about the gospel this is not just about us missionaries. Every member of this church has a missionary purpose. Each and everyone of you have been sent to your specific location to share the gospel and to be a great example. I hope that we do not take this responsibility lightly. It is a privilege to share the gospel and to help others. Sometimes it is hard (most of the time it is hard) but the Savior's life was hard as well and we are following His example! We must remember that He knows how we feel and He will help us to do this!
Yesterday at church I had one of those hard moments. I was still not feeling very well and I just felt discouraged because we had not done anything to get anyone at church and then one of the members came up to me and said "My son-in-law came to church. Will you go say hi to him". I said Yes, of course and then asked what his son-in-laws name was. The hermano looked at me funny and then told me his son-in-laws name was Luis. I then had a duh moment. Luis is one of the less active members we have been working with and so then I got so excited that he came to church! I went over and said Hi to him and asked him if he now had Sundays off and he said yes. Later on when he bore his testimony he said that it had been over a year since he had gone to church and that over the last month he had started to change. He explained that it all started when he got invited to the weekly sports night. The hermano in charge of the sports night started encouraging him to pray about getting Sunday's off to come to church. He started praying and realizing that being with his family was more important than his work. Last Wednesday he quit his job and within a few days he found a new job with better hours. He has realized that God wanted him to be at church so he provided a way. What a miracle and it all started with a member! See members hold such an important role in this work! I love this miracle because it was all done in simple acts of service and faith. I know that if we look for simple ways to serve others the way that Chirst did we will be blessed with these opportunities and they will produce life changing miracles in the end.
My challenge to all of you this week is to watch this bible video.
For God So Loved the World and then to pray for ways that you can follow his example this week by sharing the gospel with others. The simpler the better!
I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that He loves and He wants us to follow His example!
Love you all so much!
Hermana Hillary
No comments:
Post a Comment