Only 2 more weeks until Samantha leaves on her mission and I am so excited for her!
Memphis is a great place to be. We are working with so many less actives and inactives and I'm excited to see the progress that they have. We're going through another investigator drought right now where only a couple of them are solid but we set a goal during our interviews with President Hansen to spend at least one hour every day finding, so we're making sure we get that done. The STLs came for studies on Saturday and we discussed how to love the branch members more in order to improve our relationship with them. There are so many people in the branch that were baptized and immediately stopped attending. So I understand that it would be hard to want to support the missionaries and want baptisms when all the ones that have already happened are so hard to get back. The East elders have an investigator that is going to get baptized next weekend but they need to get married first. The branch president won't marry them because he's married so many people in the past for their baptisms and then they go inactive. So the bishop of another ward is going to marry them. It's all a little frustrating. We are doing our best right now to help the branch feel our support and our love first so that they will have a desire to help us and it's working okay for now. If any of you have any other suggestions, we'd love to hear them!
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| Miguela is doing great and fed us dinner this week. |
We play soccer every Saturday with our investigators and some people from the branch and she is helping me get better because I am very much not good. Haha But I think I've improved in the past month thanks to Hermana Petty. She is very good at talking to people. We were at a birthday party this week and she helped not make it awkward by talking to everyone. I really appreciated it and I think they did too. We have been taking half bike days the past couple of days because at seems to work better for us than full bike days. We have been biking to all the places close by and then driving to the far away places. Or we have taken our bikes on our bike rack to a place that's further away and then biked in the area. It's been good and we've saved a lot of miles so we're planning on doing that more. President Hansen has asked that we give 10% of our miles "back to the church", so we're trying to think of new ways to save miles by using our bikes without getting too worn out.
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| Using the bike rack. |
A miracle has happened this week with one of the hermanas' recent converts, the Ramos! Three kids in a part member family got baptized in July of 2016 but they haven't been to church since February and they haven't let the Hermanas go in to teach them since about October. We've heard it's because a missionary offended them. :( So it's been really hard for us to get back on their good side. Also at the beginning of July, they moved a little further away. Because of that, we haven't been able to stop by nearly as often. Usually when we stop by, we say hi or leave a note if they don't answer. Sometimes it's just the 16 year old son, Jose, and we've read in the Book of Mormon with him. But he never reads it on his own. Last Sunday, we went over to say hi for probably the 100th time during my 3 transfers here. Surprisingly, Hermana Ramos was home and she let us in! And then they let us share a message! It was my first time teaching them in their house. They participated and then Hermana Ramos told us she will be coming to church next Sunday. She had to work and an appointment yesterday, but they are coming this week. She told us that without us even asking about it! Then we asked if we could maybe come by for dinner with them and she said yes! We went over on Wednesday and we were so nervous that they wouldn't actually be there. But it turned out to be a birthday party for her other son, David, who is 17 and has special needs. It was so fun and it was so good to be with them and not be pressuring them about gospel things. On Saturday, Jose came to our soccer night! We've made so much progress with them in the past week, it's been a miracle.
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| David's party. |
This week, I read Ether. Every time I read it, I can't believe how wicked they were to have gone against the advice of the brother of Jared and how horrible the consequences are for them because they chose to have kings. This time as I was reading, I had the thought that for them, kings are their idols. Usually, the thing that is an idol isn't necessarily bad. Like today, money, cars, etc. are usual types of idols. Money isn't bad and cars aren't bad. They can be very good when we are righteous. The same goes for a king. All of those things become bad, however, when we let the natural man take over. When we follow the temptations of Satan, then he can change so many good things to being harmful to our spirits. When Satan is in charge, cars, money, and kings are all bad things and that's why it's so important to follow the prophet. Because he helps us to follow what Heavenly Father wants us to do, rather than fall into Satan's traps.
Love you all!
