Family and Friends!!
This
has been a great week for Sister Roberts and I. Heavenly Father has
really helped us out this past week in understanding how to better teach
our investigators. We are also getting more opportunities to serve and
teach!
Tammy our strongest investigator has quit smoking all
together! She has been smoke and cigarette free for 16 days! She has a
bit of trouble going to church because it is a 25 min drive and she has a
really bad back. So we are working with her on that. Otherwise her
testimony is really strong. We also had two sisters from the ward ask
about her and offer to come with us to our lessons with her!
Kurt is really great. He is investigating the Church because
his wife is a member. They have been married for two years and he can't
help but notice that she lights up when she talks about the Gospel. Last
Monday we watched the Joseph Smith movie with him and we brought along
the Finks, a recent convert couple that are totally awesome, to testify
about their testimonies of Joseph Smith and the Gospel. We then went
back a few nights later for dinner. It was then that we learned that he
has never prayed in his life and he has never been super religious. We
totally know that Heavenly Father had his hand in that conversation. We
taught him how to pray and challenged him to pray about Joseph Smith.
Susan has proven to be rather difficult. She has grown up in
the Protestant beliefs and is super strong in her faith in God and Jesus
Christ. As we were planning to teach her this week, we got the
impression to ask the Bishop to come with us to her lesson. After the
lesson we had with her the week before, we thought she would have some
concerns that having the Bishop there might help. Well, it ended up that
having the Bishop there was totally inspired, but not in the way that
we thought. She had an arsenal of questions and concerns that we did not
see coming, but Bishop was totally right on the ball and really brought
the Spirit. She had a lot of questions about the reading that we gave
her in 3 Nephi 11. She really struggles with having another set of
scripture added to the Bible. But we know that it was only with Heavenly
Father's help that we were able to address her concerns and testify of
the Gospel. Her husband also sat in on the lesson, he is a less active
member with an awesome testimony, which has never happened before. He
was able to bear his testimony about the Book of Mormon and I could see
that his testimony really spoke to her.
So we provide service at one of the nursing homes here in St.
Clairsville and we usually just play games and talk with the residents.
One of my favorites to talk to is Mabelle. She is 99 years old and
hardly looks a year over 75. She is probably one of the most spry
residents I have seen there. She has really bad short term memory loss,
like Dory status. But she tells awesome stories about her younger days
and I just totally love her. Anyways,
Thursday
we were playing a game with the residents and she came in all confused.
She thought it was nighttime and was totally lost. One of the nurses
came and helped her and started her on doing a puzzle. When the nurse
left Mabelle wanted to leave too, but I convinced her to stay and work
on the puzzle with me. She ended up calming down and we finished the
puzzle together. She told me about her experiences being a school
teacher in a one room school house. It was really cool.
We also had the opportunity to provide some service to the
Finks, a recent convert couple. They were baptized almost a year ago and
Brother Fink is in the Bishopric. They are getting ready to go through
the temple next month!! Anyways we helped them with their yard work
on Saturday
and Brother Fink taught Sister Roberts and I how to use a lawn mower.
Now some of you might laugh at this, but I am from the desert! Our
"lawns" are decorative rock and sand:) We also helped them prep their
kitchen to be repainted. It was really fun. They are planning to move to
St. George when they retire, they love Utah so much.
Well, that was pretty much my week. We had an awesome time doing the Lords work!
Remember, The Lord loves you and the Church is True!
Sister Nay
Quick Thought:
So I just had a thought about being a
missionary here in the United States. Some people think that serving
here in the States is really hard because there are so many people who
are not interested in what we have to say. I would like to share with
you my thoughts on that line of thinking.
Some missionaries are meant to planters that plant those tiny seeds of
faith that will bloom years after their missions are over. Some
missionaries are meant to be gardener who nourish those little seeds and
provide that good example that some people need to see, they teach a
lot, but never really see much happen. Then there are some missionaries
who are meant to be reapers. These missionaries are the ones that
baptize like crazy and make everyone green with jealousy. But none is
better than the other. We are all meant to be a planter, a gardener, or a
reaper. We just need to trust that Heavenly Father knows us well enough
that he will assign us to be the one that will teach us the most on our
missions. We are sent to teach the world the Gospel, but in that
process we learn and grow ourselves. Our experiences on the mission
shape who we are and will be in many years to come.
Love Always
Sister Nay
Remember the Lord loves you and the Church is True!
Funny Story:
Funny story. One of the guys in our ward prides himself on being able to
tell the ethnicity of people, so I showed him a pic of Ken (who is half Samoan half white), he was
stumped!
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