This week has been one of humility and making more apparent the things that I need to work on. We have pretty slim pickings right now from our investigators, as most of them can barely commit to meet weekly. We did so many hours of contacting this week, and very little came of it. BUT FEAR NOT. As Mushu once wisely said, "Don't even worry about it! I will NOT lose faith!" Because no matter how rough the week was, there were many little tender mercies and good things that happened that made all the bleh stuff not so terrible.
YSA on Monday was so fun. The Puikkonens (the new Turku senior couple) asked the missionaries to come up with an activity to go along with their spaghetti feed, so I drew upon my FHE activities from BYU, and we played a game of baseball in the gym. The catch? We used a tennis racket in place of the bat, and apples for balls. Chaos ensued. But at least the gym smelled very pleasantly of apples when the sähly players got there. (Don't worry, we cleaned up after ourselves)
Tuesday. Contacting. All day. Paitsi one appointment we have with this super cool girl who has been a potential since right before Sisar Ross got here. She is so nice and asks great questions like "How can you tell the difference between your own thoughts and the Holy Ghost?" We have a great lesson with her and finally made her a new investigator.
Wednesday. More contacting. One appointment in the evening with on older woman in the ward who loves to have the missionaries over and just talk about things and feed us snacks and have language practice. The last two times we went to her house, she pretended to be an investigator and asked us to go through different missionary lessons with her, which was great practice. And we're starting to do the member lessons with her as well.
Thursday. Weekly Planning. A lessons with a really nice Chinese woman who likes to take things very logically, but seems to making progress towards actually wanting religion to be a part of her life. I have a lot of faith in her, if we can just get her to meet with us more regularly. After that we met with a young family in the ward who are the most disgustingly adorable little family in the world. Seriously, they are just too good-looking, and their baby is SO CUTE. We've been doing the member role-plays with them as well, and I think they are going to be wonderful member missionaries in the future.
Friday. District Meeting. We talked about Christ-like attributes from chapter 9 of Preach My Gospel, and Elder Alquist challenged us to pick one specific thing that we could do to develop the attributes we've been working on. I've decided that I need to be more bold in pretty much all situations, including but not limited to talking to people on the street, and presenting commitments in lessons.
We also went to play basketball that afternoon, and 3 of the potential investigators we had invited came and had a great time! After that we gave a church tour to a really awesome girl who, although she wasn't interested after all, was really really awesome. It's too bad we won't get to teach her right now.
Saturday. Contacting. Plus we got to go to the baptism of a boy in the ward who just turned 8. Nothing like a baptism to make any day brighter.
Sunday. Church (and the chapel was actually a decent temperature and not boiling hot). Our goal for the day was to try to stop everyone we passed on the street and talked to them. It didn't work most of the time, but we did talk to a few pretty cool people and it was good practice at being bold. Our very first lesson of the day actually happened at 7 in the morning on our Sunday walk, when we walked a ways with an older lady and were able to teach her. Way cool!
Today. Got my hair cut! And after e-mailing, we're going to try to see a cool old museum and potentially some underground ruins. And of course do missionary work :)
Well, the week may have been hard but the Lord certainly knows what we need. I needed to see my weaknesses laid out on the table so I can learn how to improve, but I also needed good things to happen so I wouldn't get discouraged. And thus we see the heavenly balance of humbling experiences and tender mercies. After all there must be opposition in all things, darkness to see the light, sadness to see the joy (see 2 Nephi chapter 2, specifically verse 11 here: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2?lang=eng).
What tender mercies and little blessings have you seen in your life this week?
I hope you are all having a splendid week wherever you are. Remember that God loves you, and so do I!
Stay shiny!
Rakkaudella,
Sisar Hillebrant
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| I apologize for my lack of dignity in my photos. Sometimes I forget that other people will see these until it's too late. |
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