October 3, 2011

Hello!

I hope you all are doing fantastic!

This week went far too quickly, but it was a great week.

Last Monday, Sister Matthews and I decided to go get haircuts. I don't know what happened really, but I chopped it all off. I think this is the shortest it's been since I was in fifth grade. I have no regrets.

Tuesday was predicted to be a very busy day, but quickly fell apart. Sister Matthews and I were so excited because we had a very full day, but then everyone called us in the morning to inform us that they had other things come up. So, we went and tried to contact some referrals on 2nd street in Ayden. We had no luck there so we resorted to what Sister Matthews calls "spiritual tracting." After knocking on a few doors, we felt impressed to go to one particular house. We knocked on the door, a man answered and we testifed of a living prophet and the of the Book of Mormon being the word of God through the screen door. Then, the man asked us if we would like to come in. His mother was there so we came in, taught him about the rest of the restoration and he agreed to read, pray, etc. His mom did too! His name is Malcom and his mother's name is Elva. They are very sweet people. Later that evening we went and taught Matthew. Matthew was so close to talking to his parents about joining the church, but he says that every time he tries to talk to them, something crazy always happens. He said he still feels really good about talking to them though. We encouraged him and read from Moroni 7 about the ministering of angels and how they help those who are firm in the faith. I know Matthew will be blessed and have angels help him as he finds the courage to talk to his parentals.

Wednesday we had a great district meeting about recieving revelation through the Holy Ghost. Elder Westley had us do an 'object lesson' in the gym. He brought a bag of tennis balls and gave us each a tennis ball. He told us to throw the tennis balls to him. Everyone did this (as hard as they could...elders are kind of ridiculous that way) and Elder Westley obviously was uanble to catch all of the tennis balls. He told us this is how it is when we are teaching. We have to allow the people we are teaching (and even ourselves) recieve revelation through the Holy Ghost by allowing time to ponder. Silence is not a bad thing! We then proceded to throw our tennis balls one at a time to him to demonstrate how if we allow time and listen to the spirit then we can recieve the revelation Heavenly Father desires for us. Sometimes I think the things we learn at district meeting are so elementary, but I've been learning that it's those simple things like that that are the important things and they testify of truth in a way that even small children can learn from. Afterwards, we went to Grimesland to contact some referrals out there. Afterwards, we ate dinner with Brittany her family. They made this chicken stuffed with shrimp over pasta and it was really, really good. Then we had a really good lesson to finish up the last half of the Plan of Salvation. I loooove teaching the Plan of Salvation! She understood it very well and had a lot of questions that we were able to answer with scripture and she is just soaking up everything we teach.

Thursday ended up being another cop-out day with all of our investigators. Everyone we had scheduled in the mornings either called to cancel or didn't answer the door. However, we did get to have a lesson with Scott and Fabiola that evening. Their kids were running around like wild hooligans the whole time, but we were able to teach them about faith and repentance and they said they knew that they needed to come to church in order to get answers to their questions and so forth.

We did weekly planning on Friday and then we spent the evening contacting referrals. We were able to contact a few of our referrals...so that was good! I've learned so much from Sister Matthews. She has this great way of organizing her lesson plans into doctrine, principle, application steps. I feel like it's opened the doors to so many different ways of teaching.

Saturday was GENERAL CONFERENCE! It was so good! We went to the church building and watched conference there. No one else was there except the Elders and a few members here and there. It was awesome! Elder Scott's talk about reading from all the standard works and memorizing scriptures was one of my favorites...it was a good talk to start the conference off with. As Sister Matthews says, "memorizing scriptures helps it go from head knowledge to heart knowledge." I encourage you all to choose a scripture to memorize. Oh man. I don't even know where to begin and end with general conference. The talk that Elder Bednar gave about family history work was a good one too. Sister Matthews and I were wondering why he chose to speak on that subject of all the things he could have chosen. We were reading in true to the faith about family history work and found something amazing. Elder Bednar's last two talks have been on the spirit of revelation, listening the spirit, etc. In true to the faith it says that we can recieve revelation as we do family history work. God definitely has a bigger picture than we can see a lot of the time. I wish that Scott and Fabiola would have come to the last session on Saturday. President Uchtdorf's talk was just for them. I am totally convinced. I wish people would do what they say they are going to do....

Sunday's conference was fantastic as well. I loved it all; especially the talk about the Book of Mormon and how there is no middle ground. Brittany came to both sessions on sunday and she said that when Pres. Monson go up to speak, that she felt like she had seen him before and knew his voice. I know that was the spirit telling her that she was in the right place at the right time. Afterwards, we reviewed the Plan with her and taught her about following the prophet.

The savior's atonement always provides a lifeboat!

Love yall!

Sis. J