Rakkaat ystävät!
I really love what I am doing. I hit my half-way point on
Thursday. Can you believe I'm already on the downhill? Gross. Really, I feel
like I'm only really starting to understand how much I love my mission, and I
know I still have a lot of time left. But, I'm really evaluating where I'm at
and I still have so much more I want to do and become. I'm going to start
studying the Atonement, and I'm excited for it to help me throughout the rest
of my time here to get where the Lord knows I can be.
My week was pretty chill. We did go to Tampere again this
week for Zone Conference, which was really good. President Watson spent quite a
bit of time going over rules and it was nice to have clarification on various
things that to me had been a bit fuzzy. We also talked a lot about
"Hastening the Work," or how we can be better instruments in the
Lord's hands as we help bring souls unto Christ. AKA: missionary work. How do
we do it more effectively? We went over the five aspects of the work: Retention
of new members, Reactivation of less-active members, Temple and Family History
work, Member missionary work, and Teaching (that's us!).Then, we discussed each
one and brainstormed ideas of how we can keep work going in all areas. It was a
really good meeting.
We've been in a lot of meetings recently, which means a lot
of sitting in pews or uncomfortable chairs. As great as all the meetings were,
I'm grateful the wave has passed for the time being. As Elder Bednar told us,
"The mind and heart can only receive what the rear end can endure!"
It has also been a faith-building week in other ways as
well. Sisar Ross and I decided that it was time to put the majority of our
investigators in the Lord's hands for a while, and that's taking a lot of faith. Especially since our pool is now down to two investigators, the young daughters
of a woman in our ward. There was one young woman that was particularly
difficult for me to let go. She's Latvian, a really great woman, with a very
deep-thinking mind, and I've been working with her since I got to Finland. But
it became apparent this week that she was not ready to progress when she pretty
much said outright that she didn't want to change. It broke my heart that she
just didn't want to understand, and it was really hard for me. But, even though
she isn't ready now, I know that having the faith to let her go will give her
the chance in the future to keep learning. Besides, the Lord is a far better
caretaker than I am.
We've been doing a lot of contacting this week, and
following up on old potentials. We've been doing more Area Book work, and there
are potential investigators in there from 10 years ago! We are slowly, but
surely, making our way through that list and organizing it, because there are
also a lot of names on that list that belong to the other ward. So, we've been
condensing and dividing the lists between the wards, and starting to follow up
on the names of people in our ares. Nothing has really come of it yet, but we've really only scratched the surface. There is so much potential here!
Saturday we experienced a cool miracle. We had an
appointment at 3 PM in Varissuo, and another at 4 PM in Lauste, which are
neighboring areas, but still a good amount of travel time apart. We wanted to
do a little contacting in Varissuo before our appointment there, but the night
before in planning Sisar Ross felt impressed that we should go to Lauste first,
then to Varissuo, then back to Lauste, and even though it didn't make any
sense, we acted on it. While in Lauste, we went to visit a former, whom we had
had an appointment with in the past that had gotten cancelled, and we'd lost
contact. She wasn't home when we knocked, and we tried a couple more doors,
then decided to move on. Right as we were getting out of the elevator, however,
in came this woman! We talked for a minute, then she invited us to come up to
her apartment! We happily agreed, and ended up having a great conversation with
this awesome woman, and she even asked if we could pray for her sister, which
means she trusts us and recognizes what our purpose is. Way cool experience! I
just think how absolutely perfectly timed it all was. IF we hadn't gone to that
area, if we hadn't tried more doors, if we had taken the stairs instead of the
elevator...all of it just fell into place so that we could be coming out of the
elevator at the exact same time that this woman was coming in. What a miracle.
The Lord has His hand in this work!
I hope you all have a lovely week and look for the touches
of the Lord's hand in your lives!
Stay shiny!
Rakkaudella,
Sisar Hillebrant
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| Enjoying the last days of the Finnish summer |
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