A
Sometimes, agency can be one of the most frustrating things EVER.
Sitting
in church yesterday, I found myself getting frustrated, becausefor the
6th week in a row, we didn't have any investigators at church, despite
many saying they would come, including Nelson, one of our really
strongly progressing investigators. As I was sitting there, I had the
thought that, I can only choose things for myself, such as deciding to
walk through the door to sit down in Sacrament Meeting, and that as I
choose these things, I'm able to see the hand my Heavenly Father has in
my life, but that I can't choose FOR my investigators to be there. For
this reason, I've learned that, sometimes in our own lives, the toughest
thing for usto do is ACTUALLY to do.
With
that said, this week was definitely a good week. With regards to our two
main investigators, Chano and Milsielita, and Nelson, we continued to
progress with them, but this didn't exist without having roadblocks
along the way. With both of them, we taught them the Law of Chastity
this week, or 'Lei de Castidade' (which is SUPER fun to say in
Portuguese), and each of them had their own cool aspects to them. In our
lesson with Nelson, as we taught him, he told us it would definitely be
difficult, but 'not impossible', to quote him directly. His faith to
follow our Heavenly Father is so incredible. At the end of our lesson
with him, as we asked him whether he would live the Law of Chastity, he
said 'I can't promise anything right now' and paused, and thought for
about a solid 5 seconds, and then said 'y'know what, why not?' and
commited to follow. It was honestly so cool. With the other two,
however, it was a little more difficult. With the Law of Chastity, those
people who are living together who aren't married need to BE married in
order to be baptized, so, this became our focus for the lesson. As we
continued to talk and talk with them about this, over 3 different
visits, I noticed myself getting frustrated with them, and I just wanted
them to 'button this button', to actually DO these things, but I soon
realized, as I talked about at the beginning here, I can't do that for
them. During our 3rd visit, we just kinda stopped and talked about
whether or not they actually believed what we taught was true. At first,
the answer we got was 'Honestly, I don't know', from Chano, and 'Well,
I'm not positive', from Milsielita, and right there, we justturned the
lesson totally around, and rather than us testifying to them, they
basically began to testify to us! Milsielita told us how, as she would
meet with missionaries from different religions, she would dread them
coming over, even saying she would hide from them in her house, but with
us, she can hardly wait for us to come over. Chano told us how, with
all other religions,they come into their home, and they have this
conviction that they have the truth, but TELL them that they are the
true church, and TELL them to join, when with us, we have a conviction
that we have the truth, but the first thing we do is INVITE THEM to find
out if this is true. I thought these were both such incredible
testimonies to what missionary work really is, and what we stand for.
The Spirit testified so strongly and simply then that what we have is
right, and as we walked out of there, they were left with a firm resolve
to really search and find the truth for themselves, it was seriously so
cool. They are incredible people.
As for the
rest of the week, it was definitely a good one. We had President and
Sister Mathews come on Wednesday with the APs, and basically got a
low-down on the Zone Conference we missed a few weeks back, it was boss.
They took us out for lunch and I had like the best tuna I've ever had
in my life. We had really good trainings from both President and Sister
Mathews, President's being about goal setting and Sister Mathews' being
both about the Plan of Salvation and how importnat revelation is for us
every day. When they left, we were pretty pumped toget out and just
WORK, and I guess that's exactly what we did!
A
cool story from this week, as we were passing by sorta where Nelson
lives, and this lady kinda waved us over to come talked to her. She was
just sitting down on the side of the road doing whatever (a lot of
people do that here), and she grabbed the Book of Mormon out of Elder
Stone's hands and was like 'What's this? Tell me what this is!'. It was
sorta strange and random, but we gave her a very basic overview of what
it was, and what we believe, and asked if we could come back and teach
her, to which she responded that we could return the next day. She was
super open to learning more, and even told us she would have more
questions for us! We returned the next day, and she had a small piece of
paper covered in questions, arranging from how many people we believed
would be 'saved', if the virgin Mary stayed a virgin, what our church's
name meant, and a variety of other things, which we all answered, save
the virgin Mary one (that was so darn random). She really liked all of
our answers, and we proceeded to teach her after answering all these
things. As we left, we asked her something like, 'hey, why'd you whistle
us down yesterday on the street?' to which she responded, 'well, I
didn't have that book you guys have, and I want more knowledge'. HOW
FREAKING COOL, hey?? I was so pumped leaving there.
With
our first transfer come and gone, Elder Stone and I got one more
together here, and we're looking forward to keep up with our work. Maio
is seriously a blast.
Hope y'all had a good week! I love ya!!
Elder Massey
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