We had our last exchanges for the transfer on Tuesday. I'm glad those are done! haha. My exchange with Sister Crandall went really well. We went on campus for most of the day. Sister Gil and I have been trying something new to get more member present lessons. We bring members with us on campus to go contact people. The members are so great at it! Two times this week I went out with a girl in our ward who is working on her papers. She did so awesome! I definitely never would have done something like this before the mission.
So Wednesday I kind of exploded.....The rest of the day was pretty miserable. Sister Gil told me that I needed to get a blessing and I wanted to but for whatever reason I wasn't rushing it. I had told the ZL about two weeks ago that I didn't really like being on campus because I just felt like I didn't have the personality for a campus missionary. Well on Thursday one of them asked me how I was doing. I kind of told him what I was going through. The issue I've been having is the way to contact people on a campus is to just strike up a casual conversation with them and then gradually start teaching doctrine. Well I just stink at doing that. This elders knows that I'm pretty quite and reserved. However, I explained to him that I'm no longer afraid to go up and talk to people, I worry about not making it super awkward and weird. I have no problem approaching people and immediately beginning to teach people doctrine. He helped me see that that is a strength. Because he can talk to anyone but sometime he has a difficult time teaching doctrine. Thursday evening we had Book of Mormon class and we read different versus about prayer. Someone said something along the lines of we have to give specific prayers if we want specific answers. I thought about that as I was saying my personal prayers. A luckily, a specific answer came. I thought about Ether 12:27 "I will make weak things become strong". For the last 21 years of my life I thought that my personality (being more reserved) was always a weakness and that I needed to change in order to become a stronger person. However, that's not true. Being reserved, quite, shy, whatever you want to say is a quality that I have. I've always thought of it as a weakness. This scriptures isn't saying to change completely who we are, rather we have to learn how to make those innate qualities that may seem like weaknesses become strengths. What that elder told me on Wednesday helped me see that. I realized I still needed a blessing, but not for the same reason. I needed direction from my Heavenly Father of what I needed to do to help my qualities become strengths.
I was originally going to have the ZL do it but Friday morning Sister Gil gave me another suggestion. We had Mission Leadership Council up in Fishers that day. So instead I called an elder who I've only met once and asked him to give me a blessing. That reason I felt like this was what I needed was because this elder had no idea what I had been thinking the last couple days. The blessing was perfect. It was more evidence to me that the priesthood is very real. He told me everything that I needed to here. I'm in this area for a very specific reason.
MLC was great! President Cleveland gave a wonderful training on revelation through prayer. Yep! I definitely need to work on saying more sincere prayers. Being in a leadership position is providing me opportunities to learn things that I wouldn't have learned another wise. Once a month we meet with President Cleveland, the stake president, and the ZL's and discuss missionary work on the stake level. That meeting was yesterday. I'm learning how important coordination between the missionaries and the stake is. Our stake president truly cares about the work and I've never known how involved they actually are.
As a campus missionary we usually don't prayer as a companionship very often during the day. Basically we jsut pray before we leave and that's it. However, Sister Gil and I are trying to change that! Thursday we were walking outside and there wasn't many people outside. We decided to sit on some steps for a moment and just pray and ask Heavenly Father to help us find someone to baptize. We did that, the elders walked up and we talked to them for a moment and then we were off! We saw a guy and a girl not too far apart from each other. Sister Gil asked me which one I wanted to talk to. My first thought was the girl, because I don't like talking to guys. But then I changed my mind and said we should talk to the guy. Right as I said that the girl got up and walked away. The guy it was! We definitely frightened as we approached him. He's pretty shy. We talked to him for about 10 minutes. He claims he's an atheist, but I don't really believe that. We set up a return appointment but he said himself he said yes just because he was looking for more friends. We text-ed him on Saturday just to get to know him a little better. Then! We had stake conference yesterday so church started at 10 am instead of 1. We were teaching another investigator right after conference. When we were wrapping up the lesson the Spanish elders kept peaking in the window and being really obnoxious. We got out and they told us a guy named Timmy had shown up for church at 1. Yep, I forgot to tell him! We ran outside to catch him. We brought him back in the church and started introducing him to some of the members that were still there and took him on a little church tour. IT WAS SUCH A MIRACLE!!!! No one shows up to church after talking to us on campus for 10 minutes. We walked him out to the car and he expressed to us that he doesn't want to waste our time because he's an atheist, etc. I definitely don't believe him. He wouldn't show up to church and look up the church on the Internet if there wasn't something there. I'm really excited to meet with him on Tuesday.
Last night was Why I Believe. Once again I tried to learn a song 15 minutes before and accompany a sister who played the violin. It was a train wreck!!! Oh well. The cool thing was a sister who got baptized in the Franklin ward last week. When I was there I got a HQ referral to drop off a Restoration dvd and Nauvoo pageant. We dropped it off and she didn't want us to come back. I was so disappointed. Well I guess about six weeks ago her son called the mission office asking to send missionaries to see her and she got baptized within five weeks. Unfortunately I missed her testimony because I was too busy practicing the song! But President Hilton introduced me to her afterwards and she gave me a huge hug! It's all about the timing sometimes.
We aren't here on earth to change, but to become refined. I guess one reason I came to this area is to be able to learn that. Something else that Sister Gil has helped me see is that someone can be outgoing but also quiet at the same time. I didn't think that was ever possible. Because things ALWAYS come up we didn't get to companionship inventory until this morning. She told me that being reserved is one of my strengths because I'm able to be sincere in one on one situations. So now I'm learning how to make the qualities I have become strengths instead of trying to change. I think that has been a common theme throughout my mission. So this week is going to be good! I can't believe it's already week six again!!!
Love, Kyla
The district
No comments:
Post a Comment