January 6, 2014

Hola familia!

 

Sooo, I have some stories to tell about this week! BUT, I also have a semi-lame keyboard, so this will be an experiment to see how much patience I have :) So if my sentences seem abrupt, that is why!

 

There is a less-active lady that we have been visiting lately, named Je..n. Her daughter, Ta...ya, is not baptized--so we were hoping that as we meet with Je..n, eventually her daughter will be home and join us. Anyways, we scheduled to share a Christmas message with her on Christmas Eve, and then this last week we scheduled an appointment to meet with her again. We planned to introduce the Book of Mormon and talk about prayer--our standard first lesson that we have with the people we teach. Her daughter wasn't there, as usual, but oh well. We started talking and she brought up how neither of her kids were baptized, and then she says "In fact, I don't think that I was ever baptized, either." WHAT? We had been counting her as less active lessons, when really they were other lessons! And we had been thinking of involving her with fellowshipping La...y--it's a good thing that we didn't! Haha. Anyways, it became clear during the lesson that, although she loves us, she isn't the biggest fan of Mormonism. She pulled every complaint in the book--"Why do you need another book?" "Why can't everyone go in the temple?" "I think that this is a cult" etc. But she just wouldn't really listen to our answers, so eventually I just bluntly said, "Je...n, I think that your problem with the church is deeper than any of this. Has someone in the church offended you?" And of course, someone had.  So she told us the story (I've grown sooo insensitive to those...honestly!).

 

At the end, she said "I'm sorry, but I just don't believe in your Book of Mormon." I think that my response shocked her a bit--I said, "Well, of course you don't! I wouldn't either, if I had never even opened the cover or prayed about it." Definitely not what she was expecting. Needless to say, we committed her to praying about the Book of Mormon that night, and she said that she would.

 

On Thursday night after planning, we got a text from one of the Bishops in Leeds saying that he had someone that needed to be baptized on Saturday. No big deal. WHAT?! It turned out to be this 11 year old, Ca.......n, who had had missionaries for a long time but his dad wouldn't let him get baptized until the dad was worthy enough to perform the baptism. The kids all go to church with their mom, but getting Dad worthy has been a problem. Anyways, the family was moving Sunday morning to another state, and I guess the dad decided that it was finally time--so he called the Bishop and told him that he was finally ready (the Bishop has been working with him for quite some time). Anyways, we hadn't taught him all the lessons yet--Sister Ri....a had taught the Restoration, but that was it (sisters before us had taught them) We went over on Saturday morning and within 40 minutes taught him the Plan of Salvation, Gospel of Jesus Christ, Word of Wisdom, Chastity, Sabbath Day, and reviewed all of the baptismal interview questions. Good thing they already knew pretty much everything from going to church. After the lesson we all went over to the church and met our District Leader (Elder He.......t) for the interview. He and his brother Ca....on (who is 8 so he didn't need the lessons) were both baptized and confirmed that night. Craziness!

 

Well, I need to get going! Sorry to cut my stories short. Love you all!

--Sister Burner

 

New Years zone activity