Thursday, January 30, 2014

Are You Kidding Me!?

Family,
This week has been the biggest pouring of blessings and miracles I have ever seen. Every day with Sister Goddard is so diligent! She pushes me so hard, its great. I feel like she is training me! We knock doors every day now, even at night sometimes, just so we can talk to more people. You have to here in Alamo since it is all residential and really quiet. This has led to many many potentials and new investigators!! We also tracked almost every former investigator we could, no matter what, even if the address was wrong. This led to 10 NEW INVESTIGATORS IN ONE WEEK. We reset a baptismal date and even found families. We also tried less actives that no one seems to know about, all in one night the Lord allowed us to see them and get many return appointments.
One of our families, the Lincolns, we met door knocking. They were super open and the son is taking Japanese so he wanted to talk to my companion, who is half Japanese and speaks it. We went back to follow-up one night, and our member made treats. The dad answered and said they were having dinner, but he took the treats and said to try back at 4 the next week. Yay! So we came back, and the mom thanked us for the treats and let us in the home and we just had great conversation, which naturally turned to the gospel. It was there we asked if they had ever wondered why there were so many churches, they said "we were JUST talking about that the other night after you brought by the treats" and then we talked about the Book of Mormon, and they got so excited and said they would read it when the went to Tahoe that weekend, and even try to find an LDS church there! THEN we said we wanted to come back and talk about God's plan. We asked if she had ever wondered what her purpose was here. She responded "I have asked myself that question so many times in my life!!" We couldn't believe it. We are going back to see them this week to teach plan of salvation. The son wants to come to church so badly! He is so smart and kind and would add so much to the young men's program. They are amazing. We have tried the treats thing with a lot of people, and let me tell you it softens the heart like nothing else! We figured out people here need gifts. We are trying to have moral authority and get to know our neighbors and take them treats too haha.
Another miracle. We got a referral from some other missionaries in another area. All it said was "stevie. in his 20's, a rapper. lives on the first house on the___ street" we went to the street only to find it was gated. We went back one morning, praying we could just get in somehow, and literally as we pulled up a car came up behind us and pushed their remote, smoothly letting us in no problem. We went to the first house and they said he didn't live there, there were only 2 houses that even had younger people in it. She pointed to one saying it had college aged kids there. We were planning on that house since it was a different street than the one we were given, but we thought maybe it was the Spirit guiding us, or why not, but whatever the prompting it was inspired. We didn't ever meet Stevie that day, but we met Caitlyn. She was so amazing, looking to do mission service/peace corp types of things and it was so easy to talk with her! Weasked if we could come back to share a message and she said she was busy that week, but we asked what she was doing right then and she said "nothing really. i guess we could talk right now." so we went in, taught the restoration and asked what she would be willing to do if this was true. She said she would change everything!
We went back to visit an old referral from a member when Sister Olsen and I were together. She originally wanted to give us back our BOM. But we said we just wanted to come visit because she had been so nice to feed us and our member. She is a sweet Norwegian lady that recently lost her husband. We just had a very normal conversation. Then she was really intrigued by my companion's re-activation story, we explained a little about word of wisdom (one of her questions), and our simple testimonies of the Book of Mormon. We just casually said we needed to go, and on her own all the sudden she said "well maybe I will hold on to this a little longer and read some more." Wow! She said we could come back. Another heart softened! 

We have had to ride bikes twice so far this transfer and it gets so much better after the first time you do it. Our district is working really hard, and our total investigator pool is getting so much bigger! As a mission we have seen an increase in investigators lately. We are working on expecting to find daily and its really pushing us.
On top of this, we are getting swamped at church! We have almost 6-7 families setting up dinners with nonmember and less active friends and we got to speak to the young men about serving missions (which many are struggling with that decision) and we have a request to come help with seminary one morning and also take the Laurel aged young women out from a different ward that has elders. Last week we helped with Primary and Relief Society. Things are really starting to catch fire here and it is so exciting! We are working really hard to show the ward we are serious and trying to find on our own, and many are so surprised to hear about the miracles happening here.

Our zone got to go to the temple today. It was so cool being in a session with mostly set apart missionaries. And throughout the temple the workers just gush over you and make you feel like a rock star! Its moments like that when you never want to give up the tag! With all the miracles we have seen this week, we literally cannot stop smiling and screaming and are left to wonder. A typical night in our car lately consists of "Are you kidding me?!" "What just happened?!" It's amazing. I love being a missionary. I LOVE ALL OF YOU!!!
MUCH LOVE,
Sister Martin

No comments:

Post a Comment