In the last 9 months, this was a somewhat discouraging week. Now, just because discouraging things happened that doesn't mean that I myself am discouraged! I'm actually very happy! It was a really growing week for sure.
There is a man that we have been teaching that excepted a baptismal date. Over the course of a few events his baptismal date was pushed back to February 1st which is this coming Saturday. It wasn't his fault at all and he got very discouraged. It's been a source of a lot of stress for me since the ward pretty much has decided to take over the situation and also pushed hard to have his baptism a week later. Ward leaders and members are all super confused, our investigator is super confused, and we're completely confused. For sure it's happening this Saturday though and hopefully we can get the word out.
We do our emails from a public high school's library and this boy and girl just walked by holding hands. The boy had a headphone in the ear on the side the girl was walking on and the girl was practically dragging him to their next class. Hahaha.
There's a Sister missionary serving in Wyoming who's family is not LDS. She was baptized a year and a half ago against her parents but by the time she decided to serve a mission they were more accepting. Her family just moved to Chandler from California and the sister missionary sent her family in as a referral to us. On Thursday we met the family and were even able to have the sister missionary skyped in! Introductions went great. We got to know the family and make it comfortable pretty quickly. We talked about what we missionaries do and talked about our purpose. We asked the sister missionary to share her conversion story which was super powerful. She cried a lot too. We started teaching the message of the restoration and about the time we got to the Apostasy, the mom had a mini freak out. The family is catholic and the mom especially has no intentions of ever changing. She asked her daughter why she had us come. They daughter explained that the message missionaries share has changed her life so much and she just wants her family to listen to what we have to say with an open heart and mind. We took a time out on the lesson and let them talk things out. In the end, she agreed to let us come back and that she would give it a chance. It ended really positive and was a great experience!
Me and Elder Jolley are tight. We're definitely going to hang out after the mission.
We had the privilege of going through the Gilbert Temple open house on Saturday! A little over a week ago, there was a family that we met on the street as we were biking through a neighborhood on the way to an appointment. We stopped and talked for awhile and invited them to the temple. They said they could only go on a saturday and couldn't find any tickets online. We got their phone number and told them we would find tickets for them. The next day at church we were asking around and found a member who had exactly the amount of tickets needed on a saturday to take this family though. We called them up and let them know and they confirmed they'd like to go. We had an amazing experience. The spirit at the temple is very strong and they felt it. They also had a lot of questions that we were able to answer. We are working on a follow up visit and hopefully we'll begin teaching them more. It's an amazing time to be a missionary especially here! The Lord truly is hastening his work. Our mission is experiencing miracles that it's never experienced before. I would invite you all to get involved!!! Make invitations!! The Lord has promised that he will help us know what to say. He has also promised that either we will be led to people who are ready for our message or they will be led to us. Open your mouth and share the gospel with every one you can because you never know who is ready!
Love Elder Janis
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