August 25, 2014

"If you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the road will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic."

- Lauren Oliver

So I realized that I failed to give you an update on my new companion!!! SISTER DANA!!!!!! She is from San Fransico, California, and she has been out on her mission for 10 months. She loves to dance, and she wants to be a wedding planner. She has done a year and a half at school both in BYU-Provo and BYU-Hawaii (thought you would love to hear that mom), and she is awesome! She loves talking to people, so you better bet that everyone that passes by us hears about the gospel in one way or another! :) She is awesome, and I love her so much!

Selfie with Sis. Dana

This week we have been working mostly with the less-actives by bringing them back to church and also with strengthening more of the members by getting them more involved in missionary work. We have been working on setting up a less-active plan in our ward to help the less-actives come back to church. Once a month, all six of us missionaries will be taking a member with us on splits to visit two or three less-active families. Not only will it help for those inactive families to see a familiar face, but it will also get the members more involved. Right now we have enough less-actives to make a ward, and if they all started coming back to church, we would have enough people to form two wards and a branch. That's great motivation! Sometimes you have to start small in order to get big. 

My companion and I have gained a lot more trust from the ward members this week. Every house we go in we like to leave a spiritual bomb (which is a short but strong spiritual message), and then we leave. It gets them thinking about wanting us back over.

This week Tae dropped us. :( He brought the Book of Mormon home to his Baptist family. They threw a fit, and when he tried defending us, it resulted into a big argument. So we've decided to leave it alone for awhile. On the bright side, we were able to find 5 new people to teach this week; that is super exciting!!! The Lord has been helping us every step of the way!

Sister Dana and I are gradually finding the missing pieces and putting the puzzle back together. We have been finding more people to teach, we have also been figuring out who most of the previous Sisters' potential investigators were and started teaching some of them.

On Wednesday we went to visit an older less-active. He was telling us about his new wife that he recently married in the Philippines. He had to come back to the States and is working on the paperwork to get her back here with him. He mentioned that she was from Manila, and Sister Dana has a really good friend serving down there. So, we got her information and are going to be sending her friend down there to teach her and his children because she has expressed interest in learning about the church so that she can ultimately end up being sealed to him for time and all eternity. 

Sis. Dana and Sis. Gale

A similar experience happened to me that I don;t remember if I mentioned or not... there was a lady in our ward that was doing some family history work, and she found out that she had some living relatives in Billings, Montana. WELL... I have one of my best friends there, so I was able to get the information for this relative and send it out to Elder Organ so that he could potentially find this person and share the gospel with him. Through both of these experiences, it has definitely showed us that we were called to come here by inspiration and revelation.

We had exchanges this week, and I stayed here in Mansfield while Sister Dana went to Marion. I was able to visit with a part-member family and talk to the daughter. We invited her to learn more, and she said that she wanted to think about it. Well, Sister Dana and I went back to talk to her, but we ran into the mother instead. She let us come into the house, and we discovered that she is currently looking for a church and has never talked to missionaries before about the Mormon church. So we got to share the first lesson with her and give her a Book of Mormon. After we finished, her husband came home. Both Sister Dana and I were a little scared about the encounter that we were about to have. We were able to befriend him though, and we had a great discussion. As we were leaving, he looked at us and told us that we were welcome to come back anytime. It was such a great time.

After leaving that appointment we only had a few minutes until we had to leave for our dinner appointment, and we didn't have time to go to the place that we designated for tracting. We both felt like we should drive back to our place. We were able to meet our new movie-in neighbor and talk to him. During our conversation, we were able to come to the knowledge that he had been meeting with Elders before but had lost contact with them because of work, but he was interested in learning more. Well, in talking to him, we were able to invite him to take a chapel tour, and he said that he wants to continue learning. Once we finished talking, we looked at the clock, and it was just enough time for us to get to our dinner appointment on time. It was the craziest experience because we both felt like we needed to go back to the apartment. I feel so grateful for the Spirit and the guidance He provides us.

I want to say that I know this church is true. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am here on my mission to invite others to come unto Christ. I know that since Sister Dana and I have been here, we have been able to help many people come to the knowledge of their Savior, and we have been able to make a small difference in this ward. We are super excited to see what the rest of this transfer brings, and we have goals to find more this week than the last. I love it so much, and I will never stop loving my job!

- Sister Gale