March 5, 2012
Because yesterday was a command: March Forth!
Dear Familia y amigos:
Being a missionary is so awesome! I have never been so happy in my life as I am serving the Lord. I have never been so aware of the mountain of blessings the Lord has to offer us and never been in a situation to receive so many! I was just thinking of my situation in life last year at this time: Probably the worst 4 months of my life. But these past 2 months (well 6 really) have been the best! ever. I don't know if you can properly verify that without actually being here to see and experience it, but just know that this is Zion. I hope everyone gets to experience this soon.
I have definitely been able to see the hand of the Lord in my life and in this mission. Just this morning, we were asked to talk to our district about being obedient. So during study time (while we were eating our free McDonald's Breakfast, because we can), we read in the scriptures and Preach My Gospel (kind of like scriptures anyway) about obedience and the blessings that come. With our District, we shared the story of Naaman and how he would be willing to do any "great thing" but was mad when it was just a simple thing. We discussed how we would all be more than willing to bike to the other side of the mission to teach a specific family in a hurricane if we were asked to, but we so often murmur and are upset when asked to do the simple things like being in bed by 10:30 or not eating with members after 5. We challenged everyone in our district, including ourselves, to be exactly and willingly obedient to all the mission rules because by doing so we are promised and increase in faith, knowledge, wisdom, testimony, protection, and freedom (PMG p.122) and who doesn't want that?! If we get so much just by obeying the commandments, it is amazing to me that we all allow ourselves to falter. Satan can't promise us any of those things, so why do we listen to him?
We were also very blessed this week to have 10 investigators at Sacrament Meeting!! It was an incredible day! Of course, it was kind of funny to realize that 7 of the 10 were Single Latin Men, but the point is that they came to church! And we had a really nice Testimony meeting, probably the best one I've been to on my mission where people did not all say the same things and there weren't any crazy stories to distract the Spirit. It was such a wonderful opportunity for our investigators to obtain the blessings we promised them (We always invite people to come witness the Sacrament so they can feel the spirit and receive revelation because that it was church is really for. You can too!).
Plus, we had a record breaking 16 member present lessons this week! A first for both Sister Sobkowicz and I and possibly for the mission! And I don't feel like we had anything to do with it! For example, there were 6 people that said they would come out with us on Friday, but they all bailed on us very last minute. We called a member in the morning to see if she had talked to her friend yet and she said she lost her job and had nothing to do, so she came out with us for almost the entire day! It was a very unexpected turn of events that Heavenly Father blessed us with so that we could still have our goal for member support that day!
In the words of Brittany's favorite religious-music-cd-
Also on Friday, we stopped by the home of some single latin men (surprise surprise) to have a follow-up lesson from when we taught them the Restoration earlier in the week. They were a little annoyed that we wouldn't come in their house, but then we sang a hymn to start the lesson and they were captivated. They made us sing another one and they filmed it! Turns out they are in a Christian band for their church, so they, in return, sang us some songs. It was really hard to keep from laughing when we were just sitting there with these 3 latin guys serenading us with their Christian songs!
Speaking of singing, we have a message saved on our phone of our investigator Jorge (see previous emails) singing to us about how he is calling us. It is hilarious and we listen to it all the time. I think I have some of it memorized now . . .
Other great happenings in the land of Zion, aka West Palm Beach:
Milagro Miercoles! Which happened to be Leap Day tambien. We met these awesome women who really needed a blessing while looking for some former investigators for Bishop. We didn't actually find/talk to any of them, but we met a man who has been waiting for a Finding Faith in Christ DVD, a Spanish speaking woman who is looking for a church with members that live good moral standards, the mother of another contact, and a woman who we contacted weeks ago who moved and we could never get to ever actually see her (Don't worry, we blessed her, taught the plan of Salvation and committed her to baptism at the same time: Miracles everywhere!!). Plus we got to see our investigator/recent convert Eddie and he promised to come to church!
AND he finally did, so he finally got CONFIRMED!!! Yay!! So not only did our investigators get to hear great testimonies, they also got to witness another sacred ordinance! Nothing like an ordinance to bring the spirit to testify of the power of God.
Going backwards in time again, On Tuesday, the YSA President/Rep. came with us to several lessons. But since he doesn't have a car and we can't take him, he followed us around on his bike! (for the record, we brought our bikes to join him, but we ended up seeing more people than we had time for so he just followed our car.) He saw that group of singing men for their Restoration Lesson, Pedro (our sad-story recent convert who still didn't make it to church again), Diego (our one current investigator with a baptismal date), and Jesus (on his 21st birthday). He was super helpful and ended up calling Diego and Jesus and reminding them about church on Saturday Night without us asking him to!
Also, the Prodigal Son Story is super awesome. I encourage you all to read it because all of us are one of those brothers at some time in our life. And it might be exactly the case with Mayra's family at the moment, but we tried not to point that out as we read it to them! Haha I'm sure they figured it out! But it really brought an amazing spirit into their home that I think affected them all greatly. I love the Spirit.
Also, (because I haven't said that enough yet) 2 less actives came to church! One that I first met when he was drunk and one that hasn't been to church in 30 years since she was in Brazil! So amazing!
I am so excited to go to specialized training tomorrow, I'll let you all know how it goes.
Also, I love you all. Have a great week!
-Sister Anna Sheffield
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