Heavenly Father knows things. Surprise.
Brother Hemingway, the director of proselyting for the church came and changed our mission this week. I say changed, because he gave some of the most influential trainings I have ever received.
The mission leadership council, comprised of about 16 zone leaders, the assistants to the president, the stl's and President and Sister Robinson met for a seven hour meeting that seemed like 45 minutes. The zone leaders then took that message back to all the missionaries via zone meeting.
Here's the gist:
-bring the lord back into his work! It's his work, involve him more!
My missionary-ing has changed. A miracle example using many of the tips he taught:
I went on exchanges with sister Moore in an area that hasn't seen an investigator, much less baptism in months. The only investigator that they had was someone we had tried to pass off from my last area, named Tami. Tami has been going through a rough divorce and never really gave the new area missionaries a chance, because she just connected with us so well and was overwhelmed by her divorce. When I got into the area for the exchange, I wrote Tami telling her I'd be there for a day and asked if she had dinner plans. Miracles started right then and there. She said absolutely, and that in fact, she'd like us to teach her parents a lesson. She requested the plan of salvation because she had really connected with that one. That night in nightly planning we followed a method that had been taught by brother Hemingway. We prayed to know what the lord wanted us to find the next day, and felt inspired that it would be a family who was ready for baptism. Then said a prayer and asked the lord where those people lived, and pulled out a map. Sister Moore selected a street and I did as well. One of the key parts of this is the time. When we commit to Heavenly Father that we are going to meet his children at a certain time, we can't be late. So we had 4:30 for the first street and 5:30 for the second. Dinner was at 6:30. We went through our day and had a great time. We got out of a 3:30appointment with just enough time to speed to our 4:30 tract and arrived on the dot. That street was friendly, but not interested, but we met some really awesome kids and played basketball with them. They agreed to watch an online video. Then it was quite the trip trying to find our next street that we had designated. We finally got there right on time again and started tracting. It was a littler cull de sac than we thought so we finished before our time was up with many nice people but no accepted invitations. We went to the street connected and talked to all the people outside. We met an older lady and I complimented her on her hairdo, and said I used to have hair like that. We small talked for a second, then she took a closer look at my name tag and said: "I think you are coming over for dinner..." I looked at this lady I had never met in utter confusion, and she must have seen my stupefied face and quickly added: "I'm tami's mom!" Holy cow I couldn't believe it. We told her we would see her in an hour. We finished out that hour and headed to dinner with tami's family. We didn't meet anyone else that street, accept some nice ladies at a garage sale.
We had a lovely meal, (be jealous) of never frozen copper river red salmon, cooked over a charcoal grill. Eclairs for dessert. Yum! We taught the plan of salvation and the spirit was so powerful. They said we could come back and teach them.
It told me so much about involving the lord in his work. We ended the day full of salmon, the spirit, and three new investigators for jewel lake area. It was the first investigator lesson sister Moore had taught since we served in Fairbanks together and she was elated.
The lord is so good! I love being a missionary. That is one of many miracles as we have sought to involve the lord more. I love him.
Have a great week!
Sister galli
