February 11, 2013

Buenos dias, familia y amigos!

 

This week was so amazing. I feel like we saw miracles every single day. So, sorry if this email is a little bit all over the place, I just want to make sure I remember everything I want to tell you!

 

Thursday night, we had lesson with Ra... and Je...... (she is a less-active, and her husband is a nonmember). We are the sixth set of missionaries to teach them, and he told us that he could not see himself ever going to church or praying in front of people. So, we weren't altogether too hopeful about being able to help him progress. We decided before our lesson on Tuesday that we would decide that night whether or not to drop him, and we would decide based on whether or not we could get him to pray. We had a lesson on commandments, focusing on the basic 10 (reading them from Mosiah 12 and 13). We talked about how we obey the commandments that God gives us not because we can see that they are for our best interest, but because we love Him and deisre to do what he asks of us. At the end of the lesson, we talked about how God has asked us to pray to Him, and then we all knelt down for the prayer, folded our arms, and Sister Chase said, "And now, Ra... will offer the prayer for us." There was a pause for a few seconds, and then Ra.... began to pray. He offered an amazing prayer, and the Spirit was so strong. I feel like that moment was sacred--and I know that it touched Je......'s heart; I can tell that she wants to have the Gospel in their lives. It was the first time that she had ever heard her husband pray.

 

On Saurday, Sister Chase and I went up to Cleveland to have a lesson wth Ti...., but he wasn't home from work yet so we told Cy..... that we would come back in an hour. We got to the car and decided on one of our back-up plans to check in on a woman we hadn't seen in a while. As we approched the narrow road that led to her house, there was a car behind us (that doesn't happen very often here), so Sister Chase drove past it, and turned around. We ended up driving for a little ways, looking for a place to turn around, and just as we were turning around at a little 4-way intersection, we saw a woman walking her dog down the road, smoking a cigarette. We got really excited (maybe she was a nonmember!), so we drove to the other end of the road and started walking up the street, hoping to run into her. She wasn't outside anymore, so we decided to tract the doors up the street until we found her. The first few houses were members, but we didn't give up. We knocked on one door, and this lady answered and said that she was a 7th Day Adventist, and shut the door in our faces! It was so awesome!  Potential Investigator : ) We had no idea TWO nonmembers lived on that street! Anyways, we kept knocking doors and after a couple of houses, that lady we had been looking for answered the door. She was really nice and said that she was Catholic, and she was just visiting her in-laws who were members (less-active probably, because they didn't let us come in to share a message). She lives in Price, but we gave her a couple of mormon.org cards and invited her to check out the church. Tender mercies galore!

 

S.... stayed for all three hours of church on Sunday, and is way excited for her baptism a week from Saturday. She is so golden--she pretty much already believes in every principle of the Gospel, before we even teach them to her! She tells everyone we introduce her to that she is getting baptized on February 23rd. We have been blessed to find several fellowshippers for her! So many of the ward members came up and introduced themselves to her, sat next to her in class, or said that they would like to come to some of the lessons with her. Also, people have gone by and checked in on her, and a couple of her neighbors went over to her house to give her son a Priesthood blessing (he has a lot of medical issues). I love it when wards are so great with our investigators! We are a little sad that Sister Chase probably won't be here for her baptism, but we are going to take pictures with her before transfers.

 

We also had some not-so-spiritual but kind of funny events this week. We got pulled over for going 28 mph in a school zone (apparently they are 20 mph zones here in Utah). We had just eaten dinner with the cop's family a couple of weeks ago though, so he just laughed it off and said that we would need to stop speeding or else he wouldn't feed us dinner anymore (rude!). The unfortunate part was that he pulled us over in the post office parking lot, just as the Stake President was walking across in front of our car. Ooops.

 

Also, our toilet broke and President Si.............. (our landlord, he is in the Stake Presidency) came and had to replace the entire inside thing. He left a note on our table that said, "Sister Burner, please do not let Sister Chase take off the lid of the toilet tank again. I don't want to have to replace it again. Thanks : )" It was so funny. He is so great. While he was there he put ice-salt stuff on our walkway to melt the ice, and in the note he said he would try to find us another dresser, since he noticed that we just share one.

 

Well, I hope you have a great week! I love you all!

Love,

Hermana Burner