Hi everyone!
Hope this email finds you well. We have had another great week in Royal Palm Beach!
Last week a member gave us some money to go to dinner, so on Monday we went for sushi with the sisters we live with! It was lots of fun. That night we saw Freddy and Darlyne, they are still chugging along. We have turned our lessons into Book of Mormon study sessions because we have already taught them everything. They are going to call the court this week, and we are all hoping for a miracle. One thing I have definitely been learning is that God's timing is perfect, and we don't always know the reason He makes us wait, but we can trust that He has greater plan in mind!
On Tuesday we had a Zone Training, and we learned about how to teach the doctrine of baptism more clearly. Sister Carling and I treated ourselves to lunch at a place called Tijuana Flats, and they have the most amazing cookie dough flautas. It was so good! After that we had a district blitz in our area, so all the missionaries from our district came to knock doors with us. The night before we had prayed over the map to know where we should go, and a neighborhood that I had never even visited stood out to us. It is rare to find a neighborhood I have not been in because I have already been here for 3 transfers, so we were so excited about it. We split up and came back with 7 potential investigators, so it was great!
Wednesday we had lunch with a member of our ward, and her less-active daughter. We ended up talking to her daughter for a long time. As we were leaving our member thanked us so much for being there, and she felt like it made a big difference for her daughter. We were so happy to be able to help. After that we went to visit a recent convert who is 11 years old. His mom has breast cancer, and his dad is very against the church. It is a difficult situation, but I really admire their faith. His mom fed us tres leches cake after which was great. Next we went to meet a recent convert for dinner, and he ended up taking us to Olive Garden! Needless to say it was a fantastic day, full of lots of good food!
On Thursday we went to give service for a sweet lady in our ward who is fostering 7 little haitian children. They are all under the age of 7, and I really don't know how she does it. She was a fantastic example of patient motherhood, and we were more than happy to help her weed her garden. After that we did a fire exchange with some of the sisters, and we were in West Palm Beach. I always love being back in a Spanish area. That night we had a big correlation meeting with our ward mission leader so we could focus on inviting lots of less-actives to the ward Christmas party, hopefully we will se some cool miracles come from that.
Friday I spent the day on an exchange with Sister Cohen in Port Saint Lucie! We had lots of fun, and we ended up finding a new investigator for them. Port Saint Lucie is as far North as you can go in our mission, and at one point we took a wrong turn and ended up on the turnpike. The next exit was not for 7 miles so we ended up accidentally leaving the mission, ha ha oops!
On Saturday night we went Christmas caroling with our district again. I love doing that! Even if the people don't want to hear our message, they know what we are really all about. We ended up finding lots more potential investigators in our area, plus we had lots of fun with the other missionaries.
There is a competition going on in our zone right now, and yesterday the challenge was who could take the most cookies to the members, Elders vs Sisters. Needless to say we blew the Elders out of the water, the Wellington sisters combined with us and we made 200 cookies yesterday. It was lots of fun, and a lot of the less-active members were very touched when we dropped by some cookies and an invitation to the ward Christmas party!
Yesterday we were driving to drop off some cookies and a ward Christmas party invitation to a part-member family. Our GPS tried to take us down a road that said "do not enter," and from there we ended up on a lengthy detour. We had not been planning on using all of those miles, but as we were driving we noticed a street that we liked and decided to get out and knock a little bit right then. A few houses later we ran into John who had just arrived home from the grocery store. We started talking to him, and he was so excited to tell us about his own personal miracles and how they helped him to find faith in Jesus Christ. He recently survived a major car accident, and that has completely turned his life around. When we asked him what he was doing to show his gratitude to Christ for working that miracle, he replied that he knew he needed to find a church to go to. We quickly invited him to ours, and he was so excited. "I already have a suit and tie!" We ended up teaching him the message of the Restoration, and he was completely rivoted (moments before he had been talking non-stop, but he was completely silent as we taught). We asked him if we could set up another meeting, and he quickly offered to buy us a coffee so we could discuss more. Turns out, the starbucks is right next to the chapel, so we set up a chapel tour instead. It was a great miracle that God put us right where He wanted us to be, and he softened John's heart over a period of time so that he was prepared to receive our message when it came.
I know that God is real, and I know that He loves us. What a great time of year to share that love with everyone!
~Sister Monson
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