Dear Family,
This has been a great week. I have really been seeeing the Lord's hand in our work.
Thursday we had a new meeting. Zone Meeting. So up until now
President has held these special training meetings called Leadership
training. All the leaders in the mission we trained on specific topics
and then our assignment was to go out and teach the other missionaries
through our exchanges. Well the problem is by the time it got down to
the very last missionary it had gone through so many filters or
interpretations. Kind of like the apostasy. Well leadership meetings
are done away with. Now every month after zone leader council the zone
leaders hold a meeting and teach us the skills or doctrine that
president wants the mission to know.
Anyway, Thursday was our first zone meeting and it was amazing.
on Wednesday the zone leaders asked if I could share my testimony on
what it was like to have an investigator baptized. I said yes but I did
not want to AT ALL. Mostly because i don't get super overjoyed when an
investigator gets baptized. I get doubly worried. I worry that they
will be taken care of when I leave, or that something will go wrong.
Anyway I sat down at Zone meeting dreading the day, especially when the
zone leaders wrote the schedule on the board and all the elders were
going to give their testimonies to the beginning. I was going to be the
closing remarks of the whole meeting. The meeting was nice and the
training was good, but I kept dreading bearing my testimony. Mostly
because I knew that what I had to say was not what they wanted me to
say.
Right at the end the zone leaders were talking about setting our
vision higher and that we can't settle for anything less then our best.
Our best can only come when we rely whole hearted on the Lord. I
honestly don't have any idea what they said that really touched my but I
really felt the spirit strongly. When I got up to bear my testimony I
had no idea what I was going to say. When I started talking I pretty
much immediately started sobbing and expressing how much I knew Heavenly
Father and Jesus Christ loves us all. I knew that our goal was not to
get our investigators baptized, but to get them to the temple-- to get
them to the celestial kingdom. But that goal is to heavy for us. We
can't do it, and we are not expected to. The Savior's is the one who is
going to take care of our investigators and we can't pretend to hold
onto that control. I felt so grateful for the savior and frankly I felt
a weight lifted. We left the meeting and I knew that we were going to
invite our investigators to be baptized that day. Before our lessons
I knelt down and asked heavenly Father for help to know how to invite
them to be baptized. I thought a little about the temple, but I also
just had this feeling that miracles were going to happen that day.
When we left I grabbed the temple magazine just in case. Our first
lesson was with Maria. Up until now she has felt like she can't really
convert because she would be betraying her past. This lesson she
started asking why she was only baptized by sprinkling of water, when
the savior was baptized by immersion. She said if we used to amount of
water to clean her car, that they used to clean her soul then it really
wouldn't work well at all. We completely agreed. We invited her to be
baptized and she said she didn't want to until her husband Alex was
baptized. Alex was sitting right there- but he said no. I really
didn't feel like we needed to push it and so instead we started to talk
about the temple. What we do in there and why it is so important. Maria
liked the idea of being together forever.
We left the lesson feeling super good, and had a bunch of other
appts that we were running to. Then at the end of the day we came back
to Alex and Maria, because it was Alex and sister Campbell's birthday
and we told Alex if we came back and had a lesson with him we could also
have a small birthday party. Anyway we sat down and were teaching the
beginning restoration and then our ward mission leader randomly showed
up. He knew we were having a lesson then but he wasn't planning on
coming. I know that he was sent by Heavenly Father.
Brother Zachirson is one of the best ward mission leaders I've
had. He is new in to calling but he is great. He is almost rudely
pushy but he does it in the nicest way possible. I feel like I have a
lot to learn from him. Any way he started talking about baptism and I
invited Alex to be baptized. he said he still had a ton of concerns.
It was just so cool teaching with Brother Zachirson because the spirit
was guiding our words and we were all teaching in unity. Finally Alex
interrupted and said, "Okay, I've made up my mind. Yes." It was so
cool. Maria, who I think was a little more concerned about having time
to eat cake then baptism also said she would be baptized. It was just
amazing to see how the Lord has helped us out so much. I thought it
would be much longer before they got baptized. Wow that was a long
story, but I haven't written it in my journal yet so I think this was
more of a journal entry then anything.
This week we also picked up 2 new investigators. One of them was
so open to learning it kind of freaked us out. We almost weren't
prepared. He also came to church on Sunday. I just kept thinking,
"What are you doing here...Oh yeah we want you to be here." We had a
lesson with another man named Mr. Yu. He is an old Chinese man who
frankly is a little more interested in keeping up his English. Which
meant half his lesson we discussed the "proper" way to say things. It
is use or usage. Then the other half of the lesson was him telling
about his family remaining true to their christian faith in communist
china. It was fascinating. Absolutely amazing. We are going to wait
to pick him up as a new investigator until our next lesson when we
actually teach something. we know what to expect now.
Anyway it has been a great week. I am so grateful for all of the
blessings that Heavenly Father has given us. I love yo all so much.
Sister Allred
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