this was a week to be remembered.

July 27, 2014

 

started out with a mission to the seacon mall... to see the superhero exhibit for REAL. (not just stumble upon it by accident while contacting.) 

spent several glorious hours wandering around the mall. looking at books. (i love thailand's love of books!!! and pens. and all things stationary...) trying on a pair of PANTS! woah. that was a weird experience. i would have sent a picture.......... but we didn't think about that until AFTER i'd peeled myself out of the super-skinny jeans. there was no going back. 

we had lots of good experiences this week. a lot of good one-liners. a lot was learned... and hopefully people were invited to come unto christ by receiving the restored gospel... 

so that's where my story starts. 

we're in the middle of district meeting, and one of the senior couple is sharing a little bit about the plan of salvation. he's talking about the spirit world, and elder wheeler's phone goes off... and he says, "it's here! i can hear the spirit world right now!" 

i also learned that god doesn't let your hard work go to waste.

we had an investigator planned for tuesday. he calls us right at 5. tells us he's outside, but that he has "business"... we run outside enough to catch him and he tells us that he'll meet with us the next day. no answering his phone calls... no showing up. drat. so...... our next few days were spent inviting. a lot of inviting. it's good. i have a feeling god has a good handle of what he's doing. so i'm just going to trust him. 

we decided to take a different street in contacting on thursday. not really productive.... we got on a songtaw to see where it would go... went into a part of town that i've never seen before. then it went to go park. ehhhhhhh? luckily there was another one just leaving. so we hopped on that one. while we were in the middle of our trek back to the places that we knew.... we get a call. from a random person that wants to meet us at the church! (how did we know that would happen???) 

we get to the church. she wants to be baptized. unfortunately SHE... dresses like a HE. and likes girls. good thing we taught the law of chastity in the first lesson. but she came to church. stayed all three hours. and called us later to make sure she knew what date she was getting baptized on. miracles..... they are never the ones that i necessarily want, but they are always the ones that we need. 

after that, we had a very interesting lesson with a black man from cameroon. and his 2 friends. they are very christian. had a little bit of a problem with the restoration. and pretty much everything. i don't think my patience has ever been tried more in a lesson......... and the only thing we kept repeating is that "you must find out for yourself." but he came to church on sunday. loves it all. just...... needs a testimony of the book of mormon and joseph smith. we'll work on it. i don't think i've ever prayed harder in a lesson though. like... ever.

(funny sidenote to that day. i came up with a list of 5 qualities that i wanted to work on: love. kindness. longsuffering. gentleness. persuasion. ALL of which were tested on that 25th day of july.) 

"dalods" here are like farmer's markets in the states. they have a lot that move around, some are open every day, and some are only open on specific days. on saturday we heard about one that is only open on saturdays. so we decided to try it out. we got there around 3. it didn't even start until 5. oops. so we just wandered around and started contacting on our way back to the church. that was about the extent of our saturday. 

then. sunday. the "test" of our week! to see how many people show up. to see how much our effort paid off... (but we all know that real success is not measured by investigators at church...) we had 3 people in sacrament! the black man. the tom. and some man that said we invited him.... that we don't remember at all. he said that he's been looking for another christian church and we gave him a pass along card. he even said "thank god!" right there. he knew his prayers were answered. and ours were too! another investigator showed up when church was over. but he got to watch the baptism! wow. what a day.

what a week.

what a life!

this week i've been thinking a lot about what makes a powerful missionary. i read about it in preach my gospel all the time. i don't feel like an ammon. or a nephi or lehi. but i was reading in helaman 5 today. seriously. probably one of the best scriptures of all time. (ha. don't we missionaries say that about EVERYTHING?) and i realized something. if you are trying. if you are praying, treasuring up the good word, working diligently, testifying... and doing everything in your power... you will be powerful. 

i still haven't baptized 300 people. but there is still time........ 

my one-liner from sister norrell this week: WORK LIKE YOU'LL BE HERE FOR YEARS.

MY good one from this week: Ha! Your face is rotten! "He said the BASE was rotten!" 

(sister norrell backs me up on that one. he said your face...) 

ah! something else cool i found. just thinking about it. found the word "god-ward" in the bible dictionary. and thinking about direction. what do we want to do with our lives? do we want to move simple "for"ward or "back"ward? i think there is more to life than that. but the real change happens when we move "god"ward. in the direction that he wants us to go. 

ok! that's it for today! 

i love you all! 

you are the best. 

sister e

 

the risk you run with ordering random things on the menu. sometimes... super nummy.

other times... you get tentacles??????