Week 2

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Adrianna Randall <adrianna.randall@myldsmail.net> wrote:

Hey! Yeah, I had some extra time while doing laundry and Sister Murray said she was gonna send home her schedule so that they could see what we are doing. So, I stole her idea. I am finally getting to the point that I have energy during most of the day. 3 hour class blocks can put you to sleep FAST. Anyway, I want to tell you about the lessons we have been teaching. We have 2 different teachers and each of them take the roll of an investigator they taught on their missions. So, we teach them. We have Becca and Prashont.

 

When we first taught Becca she refused to pray and ask God if what we were teaching was true. She said that it is prideful to ask God for anything and that if we have faith He already knows what we need. It was really hard to get her to do it, but we finally got her to pray two visits ago. On our 2nd visit she said that while reading the scriptures she kept getting the impression that it really only made sense for God and Christ to be two separate beings. That was SO exciting. We went into one of our visits feeling scattered and unprepared. We had tried to find time to get things ready, but we spent a lot of time at the Doctor's with Sister Xidis. (She is now completely better!!!) So, before we went to teach Becca we prayed hard for the Spirit and for direction. This was the visit that Becca told us that she agreed to pray. The following visit she said she felt good and agreed if she truly felt like she was receiving this answer from God that she would get baptized!! The Spirit was strong! I got to share the restoration and recite the 1st Vision. It was incredible. It's beyond description!

 

Prashont has been difficult and he is really hard to describe. He came wanting us to answer questions about the bible. So, instead of asking him his questions we told him that we believed that our message and the Book of Mormon would answer those questions and we continued to teach. The other companions actually asked him his questions and after finding out his questions we are SO grateful we skipped over that. They aren't questions that are pertinent to salvation and it was essentially wasted time. In our last visit we felt like he was totally grasping everything, but then he told us he felt like he had received an answer that this gospel was true and we set him to a baptismal date. We weren't expecting this or even prepared for that! He then asked how he could prepared. One of the sisters gave an answer about us continuing to teach and help him. I had a thought to teach the Commandments (especially the Word of Wisdom because we at least know he drinks coffee). However, we had never studied that lesson and I was thinking, if I'm feeling this, they have to be too. So, sister Murray continued on with what we had planned. Then Brother Sakamaki (Now not acting as Prashant) stopped us and asked us what we needed to do, gave us a few minutes to collect ourselves, then we started over. We taught the Word of Wisdom and left him with a committment. It went well, but it's just hard for us to really understand what he is thinking.

 

We also do things call TRC. We go in and teach people who may be members, or investigators, or less actives. So, we never know. Our first time going we had a girl from China. Aaaand she didn't have a belief in God, so we weren't sure what to do, but we talked about God, his nature, how we have seen Him in our lives and that he loves us. Thankfully she isn't our progressing investigator and we are pretty certain she is a member.

 

We then taught a woman named Bregita. She has no or little belief in God either, but knows some. We began teaching the 1st lesson. Then, she asked us a most horrific question! she said, "Yes or no? If I live a good life, but don't join your church, can I live with God?" We were all frozen. We knew the answer but wanted to be able to explain. Finally after probably 30 seconds of silence Sister Murray said "No." She wouldn't let us explain further and told us that that was very exclusive. Then she said "Your church believes so strongly that they have what you need to live with God that you can so confidently say that?" We told her yes. Then she told us that she was very curious now and that she was impressed that 3 young girls like ourselves could strongly believe that. She told us she could tell we believed it and she wanted to know more about Joseph Smith. We all thought we were about to get kicked out, but it turned around! It was incredible.

 

We have all been learning about following the promptings of the Spirit and realizing that sometimes we don't realize it's the Spirit prompting us, but we need to act on the ideas that are good. I was truly humbled after Brother Sakamaki stopped us and told us we needed to teach the commandments. Well, he didn't straight up say that, but he helped us out. We have learned so much. It's crazy how fast time is going now. The days are still long and the weeks are short. It's wonderful and the Spirit is so strong.

 

I still have tons to say and ten minutes to say it. Lucky that you are the only ones that email me! We have our flight plans. We leave A week from tomorrow. So Tuesday. We leave here at 5 AM and we fly out at 8:15ish. We will arrive in Minneapolis I think around noon or so. I'm not totally sure. I believe we are allowed to call home if we have the chance. So, if you want, I'll get a calling card and call home. Let me know before Monday.

 

Several people in my district are really struggling. Elder Marks grandpa is about to die from cancer. The last thing his grandpa said to him was to serve a mission, and pray when things get hard. Elder McAbee has only 50 dollars left for his mission. That won't even cover luggage at the airport. He is a convert and was not at all supported by any family members to come on this mission. He doesn't know his dad, and no one else supports him. It's really sad. I think we are going to try to, as a district, each give about 5 dollars. That will get him a bit farther. It's really sad.

 

We had Mission Conference yesterday. If you want an idea for scripture study here is what we were asked to study:

2 Ne 31

2 Ne 32

2 Ne 33

3 Ne 11 (very carefully)

3 Ne 9: 20-22

3 N3 27: 13-20

This is the Doctrine of Christ. After reading it we are supposed to kneel in prayer and ask if these things are true. So, you might could do that as a family :)

We have learned so much and I can't even tell you all about it. It's been great. I've stayed healthy. We have 3 sisters coming into our zone this week, which means that Wednesday night I help with orientation and Thursday night as well. It will be nice to have more than just us 3 sisters for one Sunday! I've stayed busy. I play piano on Sunday, I have a meeting on Turesday night as coordinating sister.... yeah. Too much to say. We went to the temple this morning, it was absolutely wonderful.

 

I wish I had words to describe. :) I hope all is well. I hope Minnesota is as bad as what you have :S Buuut it's Minnesota. haha. Well, I'm about out of time. I love you all. I hope you are doing great! (And it's not tooooo bad to get a letter during the week. The week gets long when there aren't any letters coming in! I got a card from Wesley and a letter from Rocio this week. So, that was nice! Love you!

 

Sister Randall