In a world that is increasingly crazy, the Lord has not left us alone. The gospel that Jesus Christ organized in His short Earthly ministry is restored once again. http://mormon.org/beliefs/restoration
The family is continuing to be torn apart, but through the simple principles of the gospel (faith, repentance, and baptism by immersion by someone holding the priesthood authority, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end), families are strengthened. I've seen this in my own family--through struggles with children and trials in life, we've always been united through our love for the Lord, and His love for us.
I could outline the principles of the gospel, testify of what I know to be truth, and spout off the benefits of being a member of this church until I'm blue in the face, but no one can come to knowledge unless they discover it for themselves. Academically, this is simple--you study the text, often a concrete, universal "truth." But spiritually, this tends to be an area of conflict and tension for many. My challenge for you, faithful blog readers, is that you seek out answers directly from our Heavenly Father. As you ask questions about what is true, the Holy Spirit will manifest truth unto you, often through feelings of peace, calm, warmth, and comfort.
I extend challenges to people every day to pray, read scriptures, go to church, etc, because I know that these things help us to become closer to our Father in Heaven....but many are not willing "even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith" (Alma 32: 27). I can't force people to do anything, and sometimes it's just really hard to be trying to help people and to know of the strength that comes from the guidance I feel in my life, but have person after person reject you. I suppose it is no different than any of the ancient prophets and disciples, or even Jesus Christ himself, but I love these people, and I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ can help anyone and everyone.
This is a hard mission. There are not very many people to teach, and people in general are not very accepting. Though missionaries strive to be upbeat, in general, I think we are all pretty frustrated. There is nothing I want more than to help people. I want to help them feel close to the Lord, to know of their worth, and to know that through Jesus Christ, we have so much hope...but that message is impossible to share if there is no one to receive it! We are teaching about 7-8 lessons a week...which means that a lot of our time is spent seeking out service opportunities, tracting (ie, getting doors shut in our face), calling less-active members (ie, leaving a lot of voicemails), and going to our few appointments (ie, driving a long ways only to knock on the door and have no one answer...). Haha! It's such slow work here!
Our investigator, Z, is pretty great. We've had some really really strong lessons with her, and I feel such a huge love for her as we teach. We invited her to church and were pretty sure that she was going to come...and then she didn't. And that stunk. Especially because it was an awesome church service!
We've had some CRAZY door approaches. On Saturday we were trying to find a few people from the ward list, and we went to one lady's house....the member definitely didn't live there anymore, because this lady came charging out the door with a wild look in her eyes, exclaiming something about how the drunk man needed to shut his mouth and be quiet (no drunk man in sight or sound...), and then she started screaming about her shoes or something. Sister B and I were pretty weirded out, and she hesitantly asked if she was so and so...she wasn't...so we left haha. We then tried a former investigator's house, and after we knocked on the door they turned the music up really loud (one of the less-subtle ways of letting missionaries know you aren't interested....), we got back into the car, and I felt a strong prompting to talk to their neighbor next door...not quite sure why, since she turned out to be a drunk bible basher with needle marks in her arm, but these are all God's children, so who knows....but yeah, that was a crazy day!
M has been avoiding us for about a week, but we were finally able to get in with her yesterday! Only...it was the WEIRDEST lesson that SB and I have ever taught...she invited us in, we reviewed a scripture in 3 Nephi that talks about the Holy Ghost, and she started going off on a tangent about Ghosts, and how she'd seen some in her life.....then her friend knocked on the door and told us a tornado and thunderstorm was coming (true on both accounts, though it actually only led to minor flash-flooding), then M said that maybe we should come back another time. SB said a quick closing prayer, and then we left. We were only there about 10 minutes, and after we left we just kind of sat in our parked car for a while, and we were like, "what the heck just happened?!" It was a really really strange lesson. Hopefully we can see her this week and talk about the "Ghost" that is part of the Godhead.....
The packages have been awesome! Thanks for the cookies! Thanks for the socks!
Mom, could you send me (via snail mail maybe) some ideas for simple lessons to teach to children? Like, really good object lessons?
We've STILL had a huge problem with spiders this week...I've slain a ton.
K. This is a lame email. Maybe I'll hand write you a funny story or two haha.
Com amor,
Sister Colvin
PS~ Sister H and Elder R got emergency transfers....there goes our trio, and all hopes of speaking Portuguese while I'm here....gaaaaaahhhh this is hard!
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| The forbidden tree house in our backyard. |
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| Backing up the car (a mission rule) |
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| Diligently searching the area map. |
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| All the rapid city sisters! |
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| Final trio shot as Sister H was reassigned. |
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