So good to hear from all of you this week! Thanks for the package mom! I'll have enough for awhile now since I don't need to use it everyday anymore. :)
Well guess who I saw this week?!! Danny and Jess Orchard!!! and their baby on the way!! :D SOOOO cute! Jess looked like the cutest pregnant girl I've ever seen. So excited for them! They said Melissa had her baby, and Noel is pregnant with another boy as well?! So fun!
Lupita got back from her vacation the other day!! She's a lady from Mexico that we met on the square who was so amazing. She's completely ready for the gospel and is really searching for someone to help her have more spirituality and things. We're really excited for her! She should be meeting with missionaries this week. :)
Nathaly met with missionaries this week!! So exciting!! We were going to call her yesterday but didn't get time. We've been pretty busy in the office lately. And, we committed Thabiso from Botswana, Africa to baptism this week, and he said YES!! He'll be getting baptized on September 21st :) I'm sad that I most likely won't be with Sis Albanes to see that... but the Lord has a better plan in mind! One thing that is VERY exciting is that Kellianne, Sis Armstrong's brother's girlfriend, is PROGRESSING with the local missionaries!!! We're so excited to talk to her about it more!! Please pray that she will answer the phone or respond to our texts.
We got to be part of a really fun event this week! President Gillette invited Sis Albanes and I to come to their home and have a little musical fireside by Wanda Palmer. If you don't know who that is, its the woman who wrote some famous songs in the church like, "Oh, that I were an Angel". She's incredible at writing music and has a perfect ear. so we literally had our own private performance of her music! So fun. She also told us the background to each piece of music she wrote, told us the story behind it, etc. It was really fun!
Terry went to church this week, (she's the one that LOVED Temple Square. Sis Richardson and I met her at like 8:30 one night, such a miracle.) unfortunately, she hated it. She said that no one sang the hymns, the chairs weren't comfortable, the sacrament took too long to pass out (uhh... NEVER thought the sacrament could possibly take too long to pass out! What a horrible thing to think about the Savior's sacrifice for a long amount of time! strong hint of sarcasm), the kids were running around yelling and being super distracting and disrespectful, and it was Fast Sunday, so she said there was no "theme" or "message" for the meeting which she didn't like, and she said no one was listening to these people bearing their souls out and that everyone was texting and whatever else she was saying. It was so hard to hear. I've literally never had anyone say negative things about our church before, EVER. Even my investigators that have gone to church and later decided not to continue hearing lessons never said anything bad about our meetings. It was so hard, and so hurtful! My immediate first reaction was to be defensive and prove her wrong, but we had to keep our cool and just remember that she is a child of God that loves her.... even though we didn't as much at that moment, ha! She did agree to meet iwth missionaries after that, but we were kind of confused about why she was still interested when she had that horrible experience. I honestly think its because she felt the spirit so strongly here at Temple Square. I think she can tell that there's something more to all of this.. even if she did hate church so much. It was sad to see how much her pride got in the way of her enjoying her experience at Sacrament Meeting. That really is the whole reason why she didn't like it so much, it was all her. She was expecting some paid corrupt priest or pastor to get up there and give a sermon about accepting and loving everybody, including what they do, and then passing around a little "donation" plate to give to him. Absolutely sickens me. We make a strong point to her that NO one in our church is paid, because Jesus Christ is the head of the church, not monetary gain. So, although Terry isn't nearly as prepared as we thought, we still know that she can become that way someday, when she gets humbled. She has a very distorted mindset right now though that I don't think she'll be changing anytime soon.
Heavenly Father is so loving though. Even though we lose investigators all the time, we gain them all the time as well. He always replaces investigators with new ones, its super cool actually. Also, our mission President decided to give everyone an "all-day long P-day!!" Sooo amazing. We even got permission to sleep in! It was very fun to roll over and see the clock at 9am instead of 6. :)
I love you all so much family! I have some pictures to email you, but that'll have to happen next week. I love to hear all of your fun updates, too! Glad to hear Christie had such a great birthday!
Love,
Sister Savage
No comments:
Post a Comment