#1 - Jo and Lesa
#2 - Betsy
Hey y'all!
Lesson for the week (or the past few weeks): Stick with it
when things are rough. No matter how much people tell you what you're
doing isn't worthwhile, or how discouraged Satan makes you feel, or how few
results you seem to see come from your efforts, keep moving forward. The
clouds will pass over and the sun will shine. Miracles will come.
Sister Walker and I have definitely seen them overflow this area the past
week. :) It has been great!
First of all, we were able to go to the temple this week, which was
amazing. I absolutely LOVE the temple. :) And what made it even
better was that a family that I love from my first area was there too!
There's nothing like reconnecting with old friends, but to do it in the
Celestial room of the Temple is absolutely wonderful. :) As always, I
learned a lot while there and felt the spirit and the peace that comes from
being in the house of the Lord. It definitely started the week off right.
:)
We also had our first interviews with President Mortensen this week.
He is amazing, and I'm so glad that I have the chance to serve with him.
He is more intense than President Pingree was, but as a mission we are
starting to see some HUGE results - just in the month that he has been here.
He REALLY focuses on finding, and making sure that we're talking to
EVERYONE we see - making sure that EVERYONE has the chance to either accept or
reject our message. The APs gave a training on finding while President
Mortensen was interviewing us, and Elder Hildebrant did the math: If
every companionship in the Texas Houston Mission were to contact 25 people a
day, then everyone living within the mission boundaries (2.3 million people)
will have been contacted within 2 years. (assuming there are no repeats, that
is.) Crazy! The whole mission is working really hard to live up to
that standard, and as a whole we are finding more investigators, and teaching
more lessons, and soon we will start to see more people come into the fold of
God.
Now, into the long list of miracles for the week:
1- We were able to get in contact with Delores again - we had
tracted into her about a month ago and she seemed so golden - asked all the
right questions. Well, we hadn't been able to get in contact with her, so
we were about to drop her for the time being, but we had an appointment in her
area that fell through so we thought we'd try one more time. She was
there, and she let us in, and she told us that she has been reading the Book of
Mormon! She did tell us that she doesn't like organized religion because
of the corruption in today's society, but we told her a little about our lay
ministry and how our church is organized the exact same way that Christ's church
was in biblical times (because it IS Christ's church...) and we're hoping to
get her out to the building to do a church tour with her soon.
2- We taught Betsy again, and I think we finally got her really
excited about reading the Book of Mormon! (well, the Spirit touched her
and got her excited, we just brought it in the right way, I guess. :) ) We had
a restoration review lesson with her, and I honestly was a little surprised at
how much she remembered because our first restoration lesson had been a little
scattered... they kept asking questions about what other churches believe while
we were trying to tell the Joseph Smith story. But what we said must have
stuck, because she remembered most of it. We invited her to read the Book
of Mormon yet again, and even had her download the Gospel Library app onto her
tablet. We let her figure out how it works, and she had the app, read the
introduction to the Book of Mormon to us, and then she told us "you know,
I think I'm going to make some time to read this week." We're
excited for her and all the spiritual experiences that she'll have. :)
She said she does have a sincere desire to know if it's true, so as soon
as she reads the book and prays about it she'll get her answer. :)
3- Robert told us that he will be able to come to church every week
in the foreseeable future! Unfortunately, it's because he lost his job...
not so much of a miracle... but hey, God works in mysterious ways, and Robert
told us that as he's looking for a new job he is asking for Sundays off to
start with. So hopefully all goes well as he's on the job hunt.
4- I'm sure I've told you about our 94-year-old investigator - if I
haven't... we have a 94-year-old investigator named Jo. She's been
investigating the church for 40+ years, has family members that are members,
reads the Book of Mormon almost every day... she just says that she hasn't
gotten her answer yet. She's a bit stubborn, that Jo... but we love her.
:) Jo has a daughter named Lesa, that will chat with us on occasion, but
she usually moves into the other room when we start to pull out the scriptures.
Since Sister Goodrich and I first got together, 7 months ago, we've been
trying to build a relationship with Lesa where she's comfortable enough to ask
us questions. Well... when we were ending our visit with Jo this past
week, Lesa came up to us and said, "I was wondering if you could just
start with Joseph Smith and tell me everything." Once we had picked
our jaws up off the ground of course we said yes! We gave her her very
own copy of the Book of Mormon and gave her a brief overview of the contents.
She's excited to have something worthwhile to read while she's recovering
from the surgery she's having this week, and we're excited to finally start
teaching her the missionary lessons! See - hard work and persistence
really do pay off. :)
5- A random stranger wandered into sacrament meeting, and stayed for
all 3 hours! She happened to walk into the chapel while I was busy
talking to someone and my companion was at the other door, so I didn't get the
chance to welcome her right away, but luckily another member noticed and went
to talk to her, and then introduced us missionaries to her. She told us
that some guys on bikes had stopped and offered to help her trim her bushes,
and they got talking for over an hour about church and the Book of Mormon.
She had read some of it, and was very curious as to why this Nephi guy
had chopped off Laban's head. She was just going to stay for Sacrament
meeting, but we convinced her to stay for Sunday School and Relief Society and
she really enjoyed the meetings. And the ward really made sure that she
felt welcome. :) She does live in the Elders' area - she had just come at
our church time instead of theirs. But we called the Elders and they were
very excited and happy to hear that she had come to church.
Like I said, it has been a week full of miracles. That's not
all of them - I don't have time to write about EVERYTHING amazing that happened
this week. But those are the major stories. :) Memorial Springs is
doing well - definitely starting to prosper!
We did have transfer calls last night, and after 7 months of calling
this area home I'm off to find new adventures somewhere else in the Texas
Houston Mission. I will definitely miss the people that I've grown to
love here, but I'm sure I'll love the people in my new area too. :) Wish
me luck as I move on to new stomping grounds!
I love y'all so much and hope you have a great week! And a
very happy birthday wish to my dear brother Devin - I hope you have a wonderful
birthday!
Sister Ririe
Mosiah 26:20
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