There are just too many miracles to write down from this past week. Here are two:
But first: New Year's Eve. We watched Despicable Me 2 and Monsters University. They were great, as expected. It was weird - last year, I had only been on my mission for a few months so it seemed pretty normal still, but after not having a movie night for a year, it was strange. But it was fun, and a great way to end the year.
So......yeah. Time for the miracles.
One of the most important things I think I've learned on my mission is that missionary work really is the Lord's work. As missionaries, we don't really do all that much. We can do our best to pray and study and plan and practice and find and teach and baptize, but it all happens in His timing. Hermana Ayala and I DEFINITELY saw that this week.
Monday night: Our 6 and 7 o'clock appointments cancelled. We had a member set up and everything, and then they cancelled. We had never taken this member out before so we wanted her to have a good experience and not just tract all night without results. So.....we brought her with us anyways. We drove out to Berkeley to contact a referral, and he ended up living in an apartment complex that we had been meaning to come back and knock but we never had gotten the chance. He couldn't see us, so we just decided to tract with the member. The first few doors weren't interested, but then we found Rafael and Maria, who recently started going to a Christian church. They invited us in and we shared a short lesson with them, but they said they were really busy and didn't have time to meet with us regularly. Then we walked down the stairs, trying to decide if we should keep knocking or drive back to Oakland to get to our 8pm appointment on time. As we're trying to decide this, a man named Edgar walked up to the door we're standing by and started talking to us as he's trying to find his keys to get into the apartment. We were talking to him for awhile and we asked if we could come in but he said he was busy. But then we still kept talking. We ended up talking about his 1-year-old son and mentioned that his family could be together forever. He said, "How?" and invited us in. His wife Angela joined us too and they had lots of great questions about how we should be baptized and the nature of God. We got to share a little bit of the Book of Mormon with them and they said we could come back! We haven't been able to because their work schedules are crazy, but we're still working on it!
Tuesday afternoon: We had a lesson scheduled with Raquel, our recent convert but she cancelled the appointment and rescheduled for the next day. We had a less-active, Rosa, as our backup plan but I was kind of nervous about visiting her. We stopped going to see her because she started ignoring us, but I noticed last Sunday at church that I hadn't seen her for awhile. I didn't know what we would be teaching, but I remembered that she had a question about the three kingdoms of glory that we never answered. So we ended up just talking about the plan of salvation and she ended up telling us EVERYTHING that was going on. She's a single mom of four and was having problems with her ex-husband; he hit her with his car and then claimed that she was crazy and called Child Protective Services to come to her house. Her oldest daughter is only 10 or 1 but she's suicidal and Rosa was just so scared about losing her kids. I knew nothing about any of this, and I didn't know what to say, but it was enough that we were there. She said that missionaries hadn't been to her home in months (she doesn't live in our area but we have permission to see single less-active women in the ward), and at lunch she had just been praying with her kids for help from someone. We committed her to read the Book of Mormon everyday to find peace and just comforted her. This experience reminded me of President Monson's story in the General Relief Society broadcast this past year as I was able to witness again how God showed her that He was there by sending us over that day. It was a feeling I'll never forget, and I was filled with so much love for this woman that I had never been able to connect with before. Even though we didn't even know that it was the Spirit, He definitely guided us there.
So......that's all the time I have today. Hopefully I'll be able to fit some more of this week's miracles in next week's email. This one's already too long anyways. But that's what I've learned. There's no need to fear or worry or wonder or stress. We just need to have faith and hope and confidence and "trust in the Lord." http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/put-your-trust-in-the-lord?lang=eng
Happy New Year!!!
Hermana Hunsaker
