So this week was as you guess another very busy, very tiring, very good, very cool week.
Things are always changing and we are always losing contact with people, getting new investigators, and having investigators lose interest and ask us to not come back so its hard to remember who I've talked about and if we even still talk to them.
Two of our new and strong investigators are E and D.
E is from Hungary and has had a tough life. We met her on the street and have taught her like 3 or 4 times now. She likes to learn and is a lil skeptical but is reading and stuff and enjoys our visits and we really know we can help her. She has trouble trusting people and understanding why people do awful things. She hinted that she has a history of being abused and ya has obviously had some bad experiences. She broke down crying a couple of times and all we could do was bear testimony that the atonement brings comfort. It's hard to relate to her though. We plan to really dive into the atonement and how she can access it this week and hopefully she lets Christ into her life.
D is doing awesome. She is our new baptismal date. She is super busy so we only met once this week (twice in total) and it was super awesome. We taught the plan of salvation. all of her questions that she couldn't find answers to in her church, we had answers and scriptures for. Who created the other planets? What happens to people who weren't really bad but weren't really good either? What happens with those who didn't hear about Christ? What happens to handicapped people after death? Do unbaptized babies go to hell? It was sooo cool to see how prepared she is to receive this gospel and how perfect the gospel really is. AMAZING! We told her about general conference and she is stoked to come! Hopefully we can get a joint teach this week and get her a friend in the ward.
C is doing way awesome. We made her a baptismal calendar with scriptures for everyday leading up to baptism. We asked her to write down what the scripture is trying to say and how that can help her. She has been typing it all up on the compture, color coded the answers, and printed them off and gave us the first batch on saturday. AWESOME. She came to all 3 hours of church this week and she is doing so awesome again. She got a new job that we have been praying for and things are really stabbling out for her. God is really blessing her.
We did a service project at her garden too this week and that was fun. It was me and my trainer, C, B (our brand new convert), and J (he's 76). Pretty much the strangest group of people ever. It was interesting for sure. I got to move a lot of dirt with a shovel and it was soooo fun!! It reminded me of saturday work projects in the yard with dad and working on the golf course. I was doing hard labor and I loved it! Sweating and all and it just felt so familiar. It was awesome to wear street clothes too haha.
The Christlike attribute I tried to work on this week is patience. It's the ability to withstand things going wrong or waiting for things without becoming angry, frustrated, or anxious. That's not easy. Especially on a mission. Especially in europe. The Lord gave me plenty of opportunities for that this week too. We did a lot of street contacting and dooring without much success at all but the blessings come. Sunday we were on our last day of the week and we needed 5 lessons and 2 new appointments to reach our goals. That is like a huge task here to say the least. We had to be patient throughout the week and our blessings came on Sunday. Miraclulously we accomplished both. Clearly was 100% God's Hand in the work. We had 45 mins left in the night and still needed a lesson. It was amazing we had got that far, but ya we needed it and we had time and it's too late to visit people at home. So we start street contacting and run into an investigator who asked if we had time right then. We said of course and we taught him right there on the street. God is aware of us and when we are patient He always blesses us to accomplish His work. The sons of Mosiah had endured hardships on the travel to the land of Nephi before they began teaching the Lamanites. They said when they were about to turn back God comforted them and said if they are patient in afflictions He would bless them with success. They were patient. Bound and thrown in jail a lot of them, endured all sorts of hardships but stayed faithful and ended up bringing THOUSANDS of Lamanites to the gospel. Patience brings success.
Well I'm way outta time so that's it. Til next week! Tschüss!
Elder Clayton
No comments:
Post a Comment