Monday, November 21, 2011

Knocking on doors, teaching about Christ and actually READING the scriptures

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Everyone,

I had just written most of this email when mysteriously it disappeared. I don't know what happened to it. I can't seem to retrieve it anywhere and the trash folder doesn't have it at all. Unfortunately, because of that little glitch, now I don't have as much time to write, but I will endeavor to do my best.

We were able to find five new investigators this week. Four of them are a family which we met by knocking on doors my first day here and we were finally able to have a meeting with them. The 13-year-old daughter knows several of the girls in the Young Women's group at church because they are on her soccer team. It is really exciting to be teaching them and things seemed to go very well. We taught them about the nature of God, and told them that they should pray every night as a family. We also invited them to church but they weren't able to come.

In fact, no one was able to come to church this week, even though one of the families we teach had been assuring us for 2 weeks that they were going to come this Sunday. It was really disappointing to have no investigators show up again. I don't know exactly why it is so hard for people to come to church, but to help remedy this we are taking two of our investigator sets (one is a man and his wife, and the other is a family of five) on tours of the church building over the next couple of days. We want them to feel the spirit that is there, to know how to get there, and to understand how everything works so it is not so intimidating to come. We had the opportunity to have a really good meeting with the family who was going to come to church but then didn't. We stopped by their apartment to see what had happened, and it turned out that they had gone to a race for their 10-year-old daughter and it had been such a big ordeal that it took a lot longer than they had anticipated for it to finish. But we were then able to watch The Testaments with them and it went beautifully.

I really think they felt the spirit. Toward the end the mother was crying and she said she felt sad but she felt happy at the same time--she couldn't really explain it. Even the younger children became quiet when Christ descended. It was so cool. The Mother is going to watch it with her husband in Spanish soon so he can share in the spirit. We are hoping this will be a good set-up for tomorrow when we have our next appointment with them. We will take them on a church tour and will show them that this is what the restored gospel of Jesus Christ looks like.

We also have a new investigator who has investigated the church in the past. She is from Pakistan and is the only Christian in her Muslim family. She fell and damaged her hip, shoulder, and knee yesterday when we were going over to help her with her 95-year-old mother. We are praying she will get better soon and that she will have the willing heart necessary to read the Book of Mormon. We also pray she will make it a priority to know if the things in the book are true.

There is nothing at all we can say or do which will convince people that the things we are telling them are the truth until they undertake the necessary action of reading and praying. But when someone does do this with real intent, willing to act on the things they have heard and been taught, they will receive a confirmation and everything changes. SO it sort of just comes down to getting people to read. That is probably the most difficult thing we do. I am not quite certain why that is.

We went to into the Washington, D.C. for our P-day today. It was awesome. I got a lot of pictures but now I just have to figure out how the send them.

I love you all!
Sister Ary

2 comments:

  1. Dear Sister Ary,
    I so enjoy your letters. I don't know if you can read these comments, but maybe your mom will forward them. Don't be discouraged. Just keep doing what you are doing. In one place on my mission, we met a fantastic family who told us they wanted to come to church, but not for awhile because they had some prior commitments. The very next Sunday, everything went wrong for my companion and me. We were supposed to travel to a neighboring branch to speak, but transportation didn't work out. We had a very discouraging day until we arrived at Sacrament meeting and our sweet family was there after all. The Lord knew all along, and everything else we were dealing with eventually worked out. Love, Shelly Hale

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  2. Dear Sister Ary,

    I hope your family forewords this, but I will try and write you soon anyway. This is going to sound strange, but what I found in my mission is you got to. R grateful for your trials. Faith is an interesting principal, within it there is greater power than you or me can ever imagin. If you desire something that is in accordance to gods will and go out and do every thing you can to receive it, it will happen. In my mission the expectation was to baptize someone every week who would stay active the rest of there lifes. I had many weeks where the area had no prospects for that week, but my companion and I went out working, every time some one would fall out of the woodwork prepared to enter the waters. The Miricals of the scriptures happened according to gods will and the faith of the person doing the Mirical, and they still happen today, I saw thing that most people would never beleve happen in the lives of my invesdigaters to. bring then into the fold, anything is posable through faith. The thing to remember is before the confermation of your faith there will always be a trial of equal magnitude. So the harder your trials are the greater the blessings are coming to come into the lives of your invesdigaters. This principle is so powerfull that those working to stop you will to anything to prevent your your people from gaining it. So getting people to read, pray, and go to church will be one of the hardest thing you will ever do, but don't give up. God will ways win and you are on his team.
    Brandon

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