This
week was so crammed! So many good things happened! We started off the
week with exchanges, so I went back to Blaine with a brand new
missionary! She started off the day being really nervous about tracting
houses and finished with complete confidence in herself knowing God had
her back the whole time. The weather was CRAZY that day- a big storm
blew in and there was hail and sideways rain as we were driving. We
pulled over and sat inside McDonald's until it passed...when life gives
you thunderstorms, get an ice cream cone :) She's already an on fire
missionary! I LOVE getting to serve with the sisters in the zone, even
if only for a day. But as much as I enjoy going to other areas, it felt
like home to be back in the YSA! We have an AWESOME new investigator
named Keith. He's pretty proud of his reformed Presbyterian background
and knows a ton about the Bible...he was pulling out verses left and
right! Bonus points for his Old Testament references. At first he was a
little hesitant, but as the lesson went on he really opened up. When we
shared about the apostasy he was on the same page and agreed that things
were changed after Christ died and that His church wasn't on the earth
anymore. That's where his pride of all the reformers like John Calvin
and Martin Luther came in. We were super excited to share that we loved
those reformers too! There have been tons of honest, truth-seeking men
and women who did their best with the knowledge they had, and made some
awesome reforms that blessed the lives of many people. But we know that
Christ's original church has been restored to the earth today through a
living prophet in accordance to God's plan and pattern that He's always
followed. When we showed him the Book of Mormon and read from it with
him, he said, "You know, I think you could convince me that this is all
true." But we're not the ones who do the "convincing", all we can do is
testify of what we know and the Holy Spirit witnesses the truthfulness
of it.
Yesterday
was super cold, so Sister Winters and I resorted to our "bus
contacting" approach and rode around campus talking to people. One of
the people we started talking to was studying here at U of M, but he was
from Vienna, VA. I told him I used to live there and it turns out we
went to the same middle school! We knew all the same people, but we
don't remember ever meeting each other. It was such a crazy coincidence
that my best friends are his best friends, so we couldn't figure out why
we'd never met before. AND his sister is going to BYU right now! God
puts us in the places we need to be, and it was definitely not by
coincidence I met Tanner yesterday! We invited him to the activities we
have going on, so hopefully we'll see him again! Another crazy miracle
happened yesterday- there's this guy who's been taught for three years
now, and he never really progressed all that much. But he had us over
for dinner and said totally out of the blue, "I want to get baptized next Saturday.
Can we do that?" Um, yeah, I think we can pull that off. So we've been
trying to run around and plan the service and make programs and get
everything approved by next week...it's no minor feat, but it's the
BEST! He's so awesome, we are SO PUMPED for him to get dunked! Speaking
of people getting dunked, Victor brought his friend to meet with us
yesterday and was telling her his conversion story- it was so cool!
She's looking for another church to go to, so we invited her to come
with Victor on Sunday. Hopefully she'll want to learn more!
Also
while we were out on campus, we started talking to this guy who'd just
won a free pizza, so he gave us a slice while we were talking- #score.
But on top of THAT tender mercy, it turns out he's attending the School
of Music here and wants to be a music producer! He was walking to his
studio on campus and invited us to come check it out, so we went with
him, and it turns out the studios at U of M are LEGIT! He actually had
just come to the realization he didn't have a relationship with God and
he really wanted one, so we had an awesome conversation with him about
what we do as missionaries. AND he said he'd produce a song for us! So
Sister Winters and I wrote a little diddy about the Plan of Salvation,
so we'll get to do that before the end of the transfer!
Shout-out
to my trainer, Sister Teuscher, who is now Sister Walker BECAUSE SHE
GOT MARRIED!!! You always joked about getting married before I got home,
but now I see you were 100% serious #lowkey. Also, shout-out to our
mission president's wife for giving us permission to watch Pride and
Prejudice with the Relief Society! #romancetrunky It's weird to think
that in 2 months I won't have to ask permission to watch a movie...but until them I'm relishing in the moments that I do! :)
Funny
moments of the week: (Actually this will probably only be funny if you
served a mission)- We were trying to have a meeting with the zone
leaders, but we were the only ones in the institute building and we
didn't have rule of three, so the elders locked themselves in the
library and we Facetimed our whole meeting from the hallway...afterwards
we weren't quite sure if that had actually solved the rule of three
problem, but we tried to be creatively obedient! This week was also
Elder Cordara's birthday, so we emailed his mom and arranged all his
home birthday traditions- it was so much fun! We sneakily decorated the
institute building and hid notes from his family and friends around the
room. Birthdays on the mission are sometimes hard, but I think this one
was a success! We also had zone P-day which was a blast! St Paul Zone
is the best!
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