I
was not expecting my reaction to Uncle Steve and Aunt Becky coming! It was the
oddest thing. I felt bad- I'm sure they had no idea what to do with me
in my weepy-mess state. I think the reason I was that way is because you
get so focused on NOT thinking of home and on working your hardest and
its kind of a shock to be with family again. At least, it was for me. And you know me--sometimes, I just cry and I don't know why! It
was probably less Steve and Becky being there and more just a catalyst
for stress and stuff that I had let build up in me like a shaken soda
bottle. So, I'm just finding new and better ways to let go of stress. As
far as what to do with other people who are planning on visiting Oregon,
I say as did Theodin, King of old-- "Let them come."
I had to go into the restroom
for a minute and (quietly) cry it all out. Sister Priday came in and we just sat and talked. We've both been trying to
be super positive and act like every second is awesome, but right then
we finally just said, "This is hard." Then we talked about all the benefits--how we're gaining a
vision of who Heavenly Father wants us to be forever and are taking
steps to become that, how we're able to fully live the law of
consecration at this time in our lives, how our testimonies are being
deeply rooted... We concluded that there is nowhere else we would
rather be right now.
So,
this past week we saw miracles! And you know how they came about?
Prayer. President Tom Cottle is a legend in the LDS community
here. He's mid-80s, has served seven missions, was instrumental in
getting the Portland Temple up, and is always the best person to have a
spiritual conversation with. He had some other sisters over for dinner last Wednesday and at one point he asked, "Do you know why we're not baptizing here?" They
started mentioning things about affluence and things like that. He said
"No, it's because the people have stopped praying."
As
a missionary, we pray all the time---every time we leave the apartment,
before and after we study and plan, before we knock a door. All the
time. But since we heard about what President Cottle said, we've made
our prayers more focused, earnest and specific. We've prayed
specifically for miracles with this or that person or with finding
people. Here are some miracles (though small) that have happened the
past few days:
1) We rarely
tract, but often we'll knock doors neighboring houses we've planned to
visit. We did this the other night and a young mom answered. I gave our schpiel--"...and we've come to share a message with you about Jesus Christ. Would that be alright?" She invited us in! We were
shocked. This was the first time this had ever happened to us, and that's why we were only semi-prepared and very scared. It was perfect and yet we left after our visit feeling like we had sinned, because
we had not "opened our mouths" to share the unique things that our
Gospel offers. We prayed and
repented and the next day went by with flowers and an invite to the
Visitor's Center. She came by that night and agreed to read the Book of
Mormon! Awesome! Only downside is that it's been a week and we haven't
been able to get hold of her. So... pray for her, will you? I
have really had to work on having faith that she can feel the Spirit, can change and be converted and faith that
I can help her to do that.
2) We visited a
less-active who wasn't home, so we decided to knock on a random
neighbor's door before we drove away. A man opened the door and said,
"You found me! come on in." We were really confused, but happy. We
started getting a little creeped out when he told Sister Priday "You
got your hair cut! It looks nice." It took a few moments of awkward
chit-chat for us to realize who he was. About a month ago we were driving around and pulled over to ask
directions from a man and woman who were walking our dog. This was that
man! That time he said that he was familiar with
the Mormon church and not interested BUT THIS time, he invited us to
come back whenever we were in the area and "we'd talk".
3) Yesterday, we were tracting and Brother Barrett, a
man in our ward, rode by on his bike. He stopped to talk with us, and
we asked if there was anyone in this area that he thought we should go
teach. He pointed a few feet away to a woman across the street and said
"Her. She needs to hear your message about Jesus Christ." She heard and
said, "Were you pointing at me?" Undeterred, he said to this woman he had
never met in his life, "Yes. These are sister missionaries for the LDS Church. They were asking if there was anyone they thought needed to hear
their message about Jesus Christ and I said that you did." We started
talking with her and, though she initially declined being taught, she
expressed genuine interest in meeting us at the visitors center. She
gave us her number and we promised to call and invite her to another
activity that we had told her about.
4) We went
visiting some potentials and less-actives in this one neighborhood and,
as we were getting out of the car, Sister Priday said, "The Spirit has
been telling me that there is someone here that we are going to teach today who really needs our message." Sure enough, it happened, with a very
unlikely person. He had tattoos up and down
his arms and was smoking and drinking when we met him. We were talking
to his friendly neighbor, when ____ interrupted and said "I've
got a few questions for you two." He started asking about our connection
to the Masons and handshakes and a lot of shady things. Finally, I told him something like, "How would getting those answers
actually impact your life? Would they be of any real benefit to
you? You've told us that you've seen a lot of horrible things--that must be a great burden to you. Our
message is that through the atonement of Jesus Christ you can be
relieved of those burdens. Your soul can be healed and you can live a
clean and pure life again. We know that God is your loving Heavenly Father. He knows you. He cares about you. He
wants you to live with Him after this life and He's made a way to do that through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which
we want to teach you about." His face started to
change and he asked more questions about what the atonement was. We gave
him our number and invited him to come
by and see us. We're praying that he will! He's got a huge mistrust of organized religion. But, it was
still a powerful experience for me. I think that when we bear our
testimonies, the truth of what we're saying gets re-confirmed to us by
the Spirit.
5) We gave a temple tour to the ___'s cousin who came to the VC twice last week. He told me to look
him up in 15 months when I get home from my mission. That's not a miracle--just kidding!
So,
lots of great things happened this week. I'm learning so much every
day.
LOVE,
Sister Schmutz III
No comments:
Post a Comment