It has been a great week!
It started of on Monday (like most weeks usually do). There is an awesome member named Katrina that took us to Hollywood beach. She LOVES missionaries, and so does her husband Rowdy. She was an alcoholic and a drug addict all of her life, Rowdy was a drug lord. They were found by missionaries 5 years ago, and have completely turned their lives around. They are doing so good now, and they feel so grateful to all of the missionaries. They have a fridge on their front porch that is dedicated to missionaries, so anytime we are in the neighborhood we can go get a popsicle or a cold drink. They are awesome! Anyway, they took us to Hollywood beach. It was the most beautiful beach I've ever seen! The sand was white, the water was blue, and there was a cute little cobblestone pathway behind with icecream shops, so of course we had to get icecream. We also got to go on the pier, we had the most amazing view of the ocean. It was so fun. Katrina has SO much energy, and just never stops talking. Rowdy has a country accent, is more quiet, but has the best sense of humor. He wrote a book about his time as a drug lord called "The Man With 17 Names." They were so kind to us, and we had a great day.
That night we were exhausted from our trip to the beach, but we went out to work with high faith. We felt really inspired to be in a particular neighborhood, we did not see any success, and we were about to return to the car. We decided to just knock 2 more doors, the last door was a man named Sergio. He had us pray for him and his wife who has cancer. He really appreciated the prayer, but did not seem interested in hearing our message. We left, not sure exactly why we had been in that neighborhood, but knowing we had given it our all. Fast forward to Sunday. We are walking out of ward council, and some members come up to us. They tell us to follow them so they lead us to the foyer where Sergio and his wife are both sitting there waiting for church to start! We were so shocked to see them because we had not had any contact with him for over a week. Sometimes even the people we call 5 times to remind about church don't come, so we were so excited to see him there! He told us that he remember our prayer, and they decided to come! Our church starts with gospel principles, and they had to leave right after due to a previous commitment. We were not able to teach them, but they assured us that they would be back next Sunday. However, they did accept our baptismal invitation, and they are set to be baptized on August 26th! It was such a cool miracle! We are going to be teaching them later tonight.
On Wednesday we were both feeling pretty stressed. We had just come away from our district training feeling overwhelmed by all the things we need to do to help our area. We prayed for help, and went to work that day. By the end of the night we ended up with 3 new investigators! One of them lives with a member from our ward so we were able to teach her during dinner (the most delicious arepas of all time). The other two came from a man that we talked to in the park. At first he didn't want to accept a message, but after talking to us for a little bit he invited us back to teach him and his wife. We know the spirit was able to work on him, and they ended up being 2 new investigators as well! They arrived to the US from Venezuela only 15 days ago, so they were excited to hear some "Americans" speaking Spanish!
On Friday we had a zone-wide exchange. I got to work with Sister Smith (not my former companion, a different one). I was in the English area called Plantation. It was my first time in a "English only" area, and it was a little ironic because we ended up talking to this little latin janitor for 40 minutes when we were knocking doors in an apartment complex. Sister Smith was so much fun! We just laughed our heads off the entire time. We also saw some cool miracles, they ended up with a new investigator which they haven't had for over a week, so that was lots of fun. We met back up as a zone on Saturday to switch back.
On Saturday night we ate dinner with our ward mission leader and his wife. After that they came with us to visit a less-active part member family. The visit went well, the Davalos were so excited to have us in their home (Sister Davalos is less active, her husband is not a member). We were able to share a brief message about the Book of Mormon, then they told us that they had cooked us dinner! Our ward mission leader threw us under the bus and said "I'm already full because we ate before we came, but I'm sure the sisters saved some room!" We ended up eating 2 dinners that night, needless to say we were a little full, but the food was delicious! We are going to keep teaching Rolando, they are the nicest couple. He came to church as well yesterday, he has already been a few times, so the whole ward is really good at fellowshipping him.
That's about all for this week! It has been a crazy week with lots of biking, lots of sun, lots of food, and lots of miracles! I'm so grateful to be a missionary, and to share the important message of Jesus Christ. I love you all!
Love, Hermana Monson
No comments:
Post a Comment