This week & a half has been good!
On Tuesday 1/6 we
had zone meeting where we got a new program for prospective elders, finding them and reactivating them.
Our job is to go to members' homes for dinner and give them the list of
the names and ask what they know about these people. When members are good friends with one of them, we ask
them to come with us to visit because it's more likely they'd open
their doors to their friend rather than just the missionaries.
Statistics have shown that every prospective elder you reactivate, on
average, gets 2.5 baptisms because either their girlfriend/wife,
children, and all their friends are non members. Pretty cool, huh?
On Wednesday Sis.
K was sick so she took a 3 1/2 hr nap while I studied/watched The
Testaments. I almost watched it twice...then we got out around 2 and
tried visiting people but NO ONE WAS HOME. We had our weekly lesson with the B family. They're fun. They're the first people I met
in Chino Hills. Then we had dinner with a cute young family, the Hs.
They have a 2 year old son, L, and she is expecting in a couple
weeks. She's Chilean & he served his mission in Italy. She speaks to
their son solely in Spanish & he speaks to him solely in Italian. I
thought it was weird at first too, but it's actually super cool. He's
gonna be trilingual! They figure he'll learn English from everybody else
talking to him. And he actually does talk in English more than Spanish
or Italian. They have a music studio in their living room!!! SO COOL. I
want one. They're both musically talented, he plays guitar, uke, piano,
drums, and they both sing.
Thursday, sick
comp again. She ended up calling the mission nurse and she told us to
go to urgent care. So that's what we did all morning......yay. Then we
went over to Chino High to do some service for Sis L, who is a
teacher there. It was after school hours, pretty much we just organized
and filed papers. We went to the H's for dinner. They're the ones who
are letting me borrow their son's guitar while he's on his mission.
Nice people :)
Saturday was probably overall the best day of my mission thus far! It
started out being an ugly, rainy morning in Southern California. In the
mid-to low 60's with wind gusts blowing about 30mph coming from the
west. We ventured out of our cozy home to share the restored gospel of
Jesus Christ with God's children in the Chino Hills, California area.
Anyway, we visited a guy who's been on and off investigating the church for about
10-12 years now. We were able to have a lesson with him
over a month ago and we've been going to his home every Saturday at 2
since then. Up until today we weren't able to sit down and have a lesson
with him. We went into the lesson prepared to teach The Restoration and
commit him to baptism February 7.
Cool thing about missionary work is that you can (and SHOULD) have a
plan for what you're going to teach, but the most important thing is to
teach to their NEEDS. We went in there and started reading the
Introduction to the BoM with him. He asked "where in the Bible does it
talk about Jesus coming to America?" "Well, there's a chapter in
the Book of Mormon that we'd like to read with you. It's Alma 11. This
tells of Christ appearing to the people of ancient America and teaching
them." He started reading/skimming out loud to himself. I stopped him
and asked what he understood about what just happened. He explained. We
read on, stopped again, he understood what was going on
and was starting to accept it. We read on, etc.
From there
we got onto the topic of faith. I mentioned how last time we met with him
he said how he admired our faith in Jesus Christ, said he doesn't have much
faith, but he wants it. (THIS IS THE COOL PART) That morning we had been thinking of a scripture to send to someone else and I
thought of Alma 32:27 "behold, if ye will awake and arouse your
faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle
of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this
desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give
place for a portion of my words" GREAT SCRIPTURE. The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints makes a HUGE claim. We claim to be the ONLY
true church. WOW. So what that means is that the Church of Jesus Christ
was either restored by the prophet Joseph Smith, or it wasn't. It's
either ALL true or ALL false. Why not find out for yourself? Why not
jump head first into something that could potentially be THE GREATEST
BLESSING EVER. (I mean think about it, if Jesus Christ was living on the
earth today wouldn't you want to be a part of it?) Well, here's the cool
thing, His church is on the earth today & he leads and guides it
through living prophets and apostles! The Heavens are opened and God
speaks to His children!
Fast forward to this lesson: "How
do you get faith?" He doesn't have faith. He wants faith. BOOOOOM BANG
BAM. (that's the spirit hitting me with Alma 32) "THAT'S SUCH A GREAT
QUESTION AND I HAVE A SCRIPTURE THAT WILL ANSWER THAT FOR YOU" (it's in
all caps because I really was excited and probably yelled a bit.) We read
Alma 32:21,26-28 with him. He understood that he needs to experiment on
the word and by doing so his faith will grow. As we were talking, the
natural woman (natural man) in me thought "he doesn't even have faith,
we can't commit him to baptism", but here's another cool thing about
missionary work, it's not up to you. This isn't my work or my
companion's work. It's the Lord's work. So as I was thinking that now
wasn't the right time to commit him to baptism, before I knew it I said
"C, as you begin experimenting on the words, the scriptures, and
the things we ask you to do, and as you see your faith grow and you come
to know that these things are true, will you follow the example of
Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority
of God?" "I've been baptized before, but you mean do it again? like to
be cleansed? yeah sure." COOLEST THING EVER.
After that we HAD to
tell someone, so we went over to Bishop's house and told him and his
wife. They're friends with C and introduced him to the church. they
were in shock because they've been working with him for years!
Today we had the amazing
opportunity to go to the temple as a zone! Our session was at 8:30am, so we had to wake up at 5:45 am, so I'm dead tired. I need a nap ASAP. (So you're lucky you're getting such a good and long letter ;) The temple is bigger than Detroit. It's super pretty.
Thanks for praying for me, I'm praying for you! I'm doing A LOT better. So try not to worry :)
love you! talk to you soon!
xoxo Sister Viraldo
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