Samantha left to the MTC this past Wednesday and I am so excited for her to be a missionary. She already loves her investigators, even though they're just MTC investigators so I know she's going to be a really great missionary.
On Monday and Tuesday I was with the Little Rock Hermanas in preparation for transfers and that was way fun. On Tuesday night, we had about 20 minutes left in the night and a plate of cookies that we didn't know who to give them to. The hermanas decided to stop by the branch mission leader to fellowship them because they haven't been to church I think since I left Little Rock. I was really happy about that because they are one of my favorite families! So we went over and said hi and his wife gave us come soup that she had made for dinner. It was really good because the Hermana's were able to fellowship the branch mission leader and get to know him better and we actually ended up talking a little bit about why they hadn't been going to church. He even said they would come to church on Sunday. I'm not sure if they actually did, but I know we brought the spirit to their house and it was so good!
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| I was surprised how much I missed Arkansas, Little Rock, and the members of the branch there. |
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Hermanas Petty, Thornton, Quigley, Olson, Hunt, Wilson
I was able to stay with the Little Rock sisters overnight and that was super fun. All of the Hermanas were at transfers the next day. I'll been a long time since we were all together. We all get along great and look forward to seeing each other. |
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I was sadly informed when I transferred to Memphis that there was no Cold Stone Ice Cream in Memphis. So, back in Little Rock, her Hermanas went to Cold Stone...
just for me. :) |
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At transfers, saying goodbye to Elders Jorgensen and Anaya,
and waiting to meet my new companion. |
My new companion is Hermana Robles and she is doing so awesome! I'm very happy. :) On Saturday during 12 Week, we were talking about Teach People, Not Lessons and the importance of asking inspired questions. Sometimes I think I accidentally focus too much on trying to translate what the investigator is saying in my head or I'll get distracted by something really great that I think of to say. Hermana Robles was saying that she sometimes gets distracted trying to think of what the best thing to say to that person is and how to say it. So we were talking about how the must important thing is to not only be listening to the words are saying, but to be listening to their spirit. I can't imagine how confusing and frustrating it must be to not have the gospel in their lives. But it's important for me to listen for what part of the gospel they need that day. And then right after, we went to a lesson with a less active who is frustrating because sometimes she'll like us but sometimes she tells us all the negative things other people tell her about the church. On Saturday, she was telling us about how everyone tells her that she's making a mistake by bringing her kids to our church. She's been having trouble reading in the Book of Mormon on her own, so we talked about why we ask her to read. Then we read the last two paragraphs of the introduction with her and really focused on what she needs to do to gain a testimony and what that testimony will mean. We had to explain it to her about 5 times because she kept getting distracted by telling us other negative things people tell her about the church. But we focused on the fact that if she reads and prays every day, then she will know for sure that the church is true... and then it won't matter to her what other people think. She said that she already thinks it's good because it talks about God, but we told her that if she read and prayed, she would know if the Book of Mormon is just a good thing, or if it actually is true. She seemed to understand so much better than the other times we've gone over, which was awesome, and it was because we were really focusing on listening to her concerns and then discerning her need to have a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon.
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| Hermana Robles is a native Spanish speaker so I am learning so much from her. She moved to Texas from Mexico when she was 11 so she speaks English too and understands how hard it is to learn a language! |
Back in Memphis, our top investigator's husband has not been very interested in having us over the whole time we've been teaching her, but this week she said that she thinks he might be ready to hear the lessons! She is so excited for us to come over and teach him and now we are just working on figuring out a time when he will be home that we can come over because she says he usually gets home super late. Also we did our one hour of finding by the spirit yesterday and we found 3 super awesome ladies! They were sitting outside of their apartment and we showed them the Because of Him video and they LOVED it! One of them even had tears in her eyes. I've showed that video a lot on my mission and everyone always likes it. But no one has loved it as much as these ladies. They were so happy to set up a return appointment and even asked if they could come visit us at church on Sunday before we even got the chance to invite them! I know we were supposed to find them.
I love 12 week so much. Because I'm training again, I get to go though the basics again! This week specifically, we talked about the baptismal invitation and why it's important to invite at the beginning. Sometimes it's hard to extend the invitation during the first lesson because we're scared of what they'll say or we don't want them to think we're weird and not want to meet with us anymore. But inviting others to baptism really is central to our purpose. Our purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ and what better way to do that than inviting them to be baptized!
I love you all!
Hermana Keller
