Spreading the good news to the youth

Hi, my name is Sister Thiriot, and there is nothing I love more than being a missionary. 

That basically sums up my thought process right now.

 I guess I'll tell you about the past week.  It was definitely a more productive one.  I've repeatedly said that Sister Ison and I have been working hard to be diligent and exactly obedient and we are finally starting to see the fruits of our labors!

So our entire teaching pool turned to children this week, which I can't complain about it!  7 out of our 10 investigators are between the ages of 9-16.   We've been working hard to work with the ward members and gain their trust and have been asking all of the auxiliary leaders for assignments and ways that we can get involved and help them. This week, the young woman president gave us names of two sisters that attended girls camp who showed interest in joining the church but then suddenly disappeared. We were able to finally locate these two girls through their grandmother who is a less active and on top of that, we were also able to meet their two younger siblings as well as two of their cousins who were so excited to see us and told us how badly they wanted to attend church!  Their grandmother is such an incredible woman and has basically raised them due to their crazy home situations and wants nothing more but for them to be happy.  We were able to teach  the four of the younger kids at the grandmothers home, and invited them all to church! 

So, a humbling experience dealing with them, Sunday morning, we were waiting for our investigators to come to church and were disappointed when none showed so after we took the sacrament, we headed into the chapel.  After the meeting ended, we walked out to see the grandmother and her four girls sitting on the couches!  They were so excited to attend primary so after taking them to their individual classes we came back to talk to the grandmother who looked pretty distressed.  We asked her what was going on, and she had told us how badly she had wanted her grandchildren at church, but how it has been nearly impossible to get there not only because of her illnesses and disabilities, but also because she can't even afford the gas to get there (she lives 20+ miles one way from the church.)  She said how this particular morning, she somehow managed to scrounge up five dollars so they could make it to church, sacrificing food money for that week.  It is seriously crazy to me how much people out here sacrifice just to be able to get to church!  I was again reminded how blessed I have been my entire life to have it so easy not ever having to worry about traveling far distances to church and even just having the money to get there!  I'm so grateful for the sacrifice that she made so that her granddaughters could be at church this week. We are going to continue focusing on them and working with their parents so that they will give a consent to be baptized!

If I haven't mentioned before, being a missionary is literally having front row seats to miracles every single day.  Another miracle that happened this week was a visit with a less active named Jim. Jim got baptized about ten years ago and has always been a really strong member until last year when the bishop offended him.  He stated how he will not be coming to church until the bishop is released which would be another few years.  Missionaries have been working with him off and on, but he hasn't shown much progress, so we have tried to use our time more wisely spending it elsewhere.  Yesterday, we had a good solid day planned with lots of backups but everything, and I mean EVERYTHING fell through, backups and all.  We sat there pondering of what to do and we decided we would go stop by Jim’s house.  We shared some random thought that I pulled out of nowhere, not thinking much about it and he had told us that he was praying to know if he should go back to church or not and that we had called him to come over minutes later and he was taking that as a clear sign that Heavenly Father needs him back at church. It's so incredible that I can do the greatest work of being an instrument in the Lords hands as I allow the spirit to work through me!    

To end it on a funny note, (or at least I got a laugh out of it), we were talking to a random guy in a parking lot and had a pretty good, solid hour lesson with him. He expressed how he was searching for a church and was waiting for god to lead him somewhere and he invited us to the church he had been investigating and said he'd come to ours in return, so we did just that!  Sister Ison was terrified to have her first experience of attending another church here in the south, specifically the Pentecostal church called "a day of deliverance", but was surprised to find out how casual it really was.. that is, until the last ten minutes. Of course, there was lots of clapping and music and after the preacher did his spill, he invited anyone to come up and confess their sins, and be saved.  Well, it just so happened that our so called "new investigator" invited us to join him on his special day of turning his life over to his savior. Our new friend went to the front of the room and  was suddenly overcome by the holy spirit and fell on the ground and well.. that's about the last we saw of him.  Unfortunately, he didn't attend our services like he had said, but it was a memorable experience nonetheless.

Well, that was my week.  I hope yours was just as great.

The church is true!  Don't ever hesitate to go out and share it. 

 

Love, Sister Thiriot