Miraculous Coincidences

Rakas ystäviä,

I hope no one had a heart attack (Mom) because I'm writing so much later in the day than usual. We got all our missionary work done this morning since that's when things got scheduled, and then we wanted to hit up the stores before most of them closed at 6pm, and now here we are. And the Sister Training Leaders are coming in from Tampere tonight to do splits tomorrow, which will be way fun because this week is Festinord! I'm so excited that we get to help out so much, because we basically are going to Festinord for FREE. When does that ever happen? Next week you will hear all about it :)

The coolest thing that happened is that we had our first lesson on Tuesday with an Iranian man we met last week. But first a little important back story: A few months ago, Sisar Howell and I met an Iranian woman on the street who stopped us and asked if we had the rest of the Book of Mormon in Persian. Turns out she'd been taught quite a bit a few years back, had read all the Book of Mormon excerpts available in Persian, and had loved it. But when she had resisted setting a baptismal date (she was from Iran after all, and things are a lot different for people in that part of the world) the missionaries had let her go for a while and she had never been picked back up. So we started meeting with her until we were unable to get in contact with her for various reasons. 

Now fast forward to last Sunday evening, when Sisar Ross and I are stopped by and the Iranian man started telling us he's pretty sure he's seen us before and was asking for all the Persian materials we have available. This guy is probably the most agreeable person I've ever met, and we set up a return appointment right away. Well we met with him on Tuesday, gave him the Book of Mormon excerpts in Persian, taught a sweet lesson where he basically kept asking us to talk more about the Book and telling us he wants to know everything we can tell him, and then his friend shows up whom he'd invited and she was way interested too! We got a return appointment with both of them for Friday (where they subsequently agreed to come to church on Sunday and BOTH SHOWED UP, courtesy of the bishop who gave them a ride). And on top of all this, it turns out that this man in the (ex?)HUSBAND of the Iranian woman we met a few months ago. Talk about miracles! OR really, talk about the fact that these people are super ready for the gospel. The only potential speed block in the situation is that the man only speaks English and Persian (fine) and the friend only speaks Finnish and Persian (also fine) but they seem to not understand that we really need to meet with them separately and so both lessons we have had with them have been the two of them together with the lady not really understanding when we speak English and the man not understanding at all when we speak Finnish. So one of us has been teaching the man and the other of us has been teaching the woman, but we are going to have to split them up eventually. But other than that, they are basically the nicest most accepting people I have ever met, and I'm (cautiously) excited to see where this goes!

That is the biggest thing that happened this week. I honestly don't remember too much else. I forgot my planner in the apartment so I can't go back over the week to see what happened, which is honestly probably a good thing because I always take too long typing this email. 

I hope you all have a really fabulous week! Remember the Lord loves you and that anything is possible through the power of the Atonement!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant