Dear Family and Friends,
This is a letter. It contains the thoughts I have as I reflect on the past week. It is not the last. But almost!
Alright, the fact that I am going home so soon has actually started to creep into my thoughts. Once in a while. But because of that, I'd rather GO and DO now and TELL you all about it later.
And while I love you all, I don't know what's going on in your world to make this relevant to you.
So here is a brief run down of the week:
Tuesday, biking. See below.
Wednesday, Weekly planning! and No correlation. But Sister Boylston came with us to see Stacey! We had a lesson outside because it was really nice weather. Yup I said it.
Thursday, Valentine's Day! We had a conference with Elder O.Vincent Haleck of the Seventy! It was awesome. Then I went on exchanges to Palm Beach Central! I didn't get to see any of my recent converts, but I did get to see Randolph Gaines, a man who I found and was then baptized in the English ward! (He had very little memory of me!)
Friday, woke up in Palm Beach! It was rainy. I got a really bad headache. Blah.
Saturday was cold. We found some cool people including Devarius, who accepted baptism!
Sunday was colder (the high was 58) and no one came to church. (Okay so there were lots of people at church, just none of our investigators)
Monday, District Training. It was great. then we had 3 dinner appointments (we only made it to two.) We found an awesome woman in an apartment that used to have a member family. See below.
Tuesday, back up to 75 degrees. I think we'll go play mini-golf.
. . . and some of what I wrote to President:
"It still surprises me that Satan can use so many different tactics to try to get a missionary down! I have been working/praying really hard to be sure that I don't get "trunky" or slack off, and Satan knows it. This week, he used emotions, weather, physical strength, companions, and investigators to try to get me down. While I wish I could say that I paid no heed to these things, they did manage to slow me down a few times. But, because of the wonderful gift of the Atonement, I was able to repent and get up and get going and doing again fairly soon! Now I just have to work on not letting those things affect me at all!
This week was interesting. It definitely didn't turn out how we had planned, or wanted it to go, but we were still able to see some amazing miracles. Tuesday night, we were riding our bikes. We had harvested until it was too dark to see because all of our lessons had fallen through and then went to see some old potential investigators. As we were biking, we stopped and contacted a man on the sidewalk. He was on the phone and didn't really speak English, but we gave him a Book of Mormon pass-along card anyway. We started going again and then heard someone calling out to us. I stopped and turned around to see the man walking back toward us. As we caught back up with him, he said "I Mormon!" In a broken mixture of English and French, we found out that his name was Joseph, that he had been baptized in Haiti and had moved here and couldn't find the church. We gave him the address of the church, our phone number and the number of a woman in the ward who speaks Creole. He was so happy! On Sunday, another family in the ward picked him and his daughter up. I was so excited to see them in the Chapel! I knew we had been inspired by the Spirit to go visit that potential (who wasn't even home) so that we could meet Joseph on the street. I am grateful that God could trust us to follow the Spirit so that Joseph could find the church!
On Sunday in ward council meeting, the Bishop wanted to go through the ward list to identify as many people as possible. He invited the missionaries and we were able to give information about individuals that we had met and that former missionaries had made notes about. I was grateful that we were allowed to be a part of that and feel more like we are part of the fiber of the ward. We were also able to get the names of some less actives that no one knew about and are excited to visit as many as possible to report back to the ward council next week. In fact, yesterday we stopped by a family that lives close to us. There was a note by their name that they were attending a Methodist church now, but we went by to see if we could member-bless them. Turns out, they don't live there anymore! But the woman who answered the door was very nice and let us in to leave a blessing in her home. She didn't speak much English either, but after the prayer she asked if we could come back again and pray for her family some more! We readily agreed! She definitely felt the spirit, even though she probably couldn't understand most of the words in the prayer. We are excited to go back and visit her with a member that can communicate better with her!"
Now, should you have any questions or requests for souvenirs, please send me a letter immediately. As in today or tomorrow. Otherwise, I'll see you soon.
Bye for now!
Love, Hermana Sheffield
Stay tuned next week as Sister Sheffield explains how her departing interview went and how amazing miracles happened!
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