Hi, everybody!
We met up with a family we're working with, they still would like to be baptized but they are very busy. We taught them about fasting and today we are going to their home and will find out when they will start fasting and we're going to fast with them.
Becky is still doing well working towards her baptism on Dec 23rd. She is learning and soaking in a lot and she really enjoys it.
Another investigator of ours is having many struggles the month leading to her baptism on Dec 30th and her environment just isn't conducive to the spirit, so it's hard for her to stay strong and not smoke when she is at home.
We invited our upstairs neighbor to take the lessons and she accepted, so we've taught her a few things and yesterday we gave her a church tour. It helped her a lot because she was very reserved and anxious in a new environment.
Mary is great. She wanted to come to church, and she was going to but she got ill. The opposition is real.
One of our investigators referred us to a friend of hers. We visited her yesterday, and her son was there. Her son, two days back, had made the decision to be baptized, but didn't know which church to be a part of. We started teaching him and his mom, and gave the mom a priesthood blessing for her bones because they aren't doing so hot, and after she said she could already feel better.
We had gone to the home of a less-active member and her non-member husband. They unexpectedly ordered pizza for us, and then we got talking and the member, Andrea, said one thing she loved about the church was proxy baptisms, and family. So, we invited her to do family history, and she accepted. We have an appointment tomorrow.
We went to another Less-active household and the non-member husband was home, the member was not. We talked to him and he invited us back the next week. We came back and told him about the LightTheWorld initiative the church is putting on. He loved it. I heard second hand that he actually posted it on facebook and mentioned us. Then he pulled out his wife's quad (combination book of Book of Mormon/doctrine and Covenants/Bible/Pearl of Great Price) and said he had been reading a little in the Book of Mormon. I asked where, he said 1 Nephi 25:23. Now, for those of you who don't know, in the bible belt this is a dangerous scripture, because many people will automatically think that we believe in being saved by our own works. What they don't realize is we are saying, Christ's grace saves us, and how we connect to that grace is by the things we do. So, to clarify, I read James chapter 2 with him (new testament) where it says faith without works is dead, the demons believe, and tremble, faith is made perfect through works, etc. He said "Well it doesn't get much clearer than that." Now he wants us to come back and answer some more of his questions.
There is a member of our ward who is not active and she has been pretty reserved, but I was just about knocked off my feet when I called her Sunday morning to see if we could come at 5:30 and she said "yes," AND "I'm going to be at church today." She didn't end up coming to church unfortunately but she wants to and that's huge progress. We talked to her about her wanting to go to the temple and left her with a pamphlet and a return appointment for the next week.
We had a neat experience on Friday, participating in Light the World. It was the first day and the theme was Matthew 10:8 - "Freely ye have received, freely give."
We had an appointment later to skateboard with a potential investigator. So, when we had prayed to find someone to give our bag of food to, and I saw a man with a skateboard in his hand, we had to turn around and talk to him. Well, he disappeared so we looked for him. We found him at the McDonalds we had passed earlier. Well this time, there was also a homeless man there who was not previous to that. I gave the homeless man the bag while the other elders talked to the guy with the skateboard. Then, a homeless lady we met before was there too, so we got her some food too! Three people were affected by one act.
I have been praying that the hearts of the people here would be softened and to be able to see them the way the LORD sees them so that I know when they are ready. I've seen these things come to pass.
Loves,
Elder Rodgers
No comments:
Post a Comment