Wow remember last week was the hardest week of my mission? Well this week I have seen the most miracles in my entire life and Heavenly Father keeps showering us with so many more. I want to share an experience I had this week, but to give ya'll some back up information I need to fill you in on our District Leader, Elder Ferguson. He's the best. I came out with him from Mexico and he is such a humble and hard worker. He was inspired to set a goal for our district this week to contact 72 people and teach 3 other lessons while in the process. Seems pretty easy, but we had quite the amount of appointments planned and we weren't sure if we would have time for all of it, but we were determined.
It was Friday and we had set apart 4 hours for walking the streets of Orlando hoping to contact people and make our way to this one apartment complex we wanted to knock around in. Well along the way we met so many Anti-Christs. I don't think I have ever been bashed so much in my whole mission with a lot of "not to discourage you, but....." or the classic "you know Satan is the founder of your religion right?" So here we are getting bashed from almost every person we meet and arrive at the apartment complex. Now in order to see the picture and what a miracle this truly was I am going to describe the situation that happened next. So the apartment complex has two entrances about 60 feet apart and we saw a bike rider coming down so we ended up talking to him in the middle of the two. After we decided to walk to the one up the street a little bit and start our knocking there. We weren't having any success and half the apartments were vacant, but we kept knocking. We knock on this one apartment and *dun dun dunnn* someone came to look through the peephole, but didn't answer the door, so we head back down the stairs and about 4 seconds later a man opens the door from the top and is like "sorry we don't speak English..." Us: "habla espanol?" Him: "Si!" We go and explain to him about what we are doing as missonaries and he invites us in, which we wouldn't be able to do unless there is another women in the house and guess what? There was, his mother-in-law. He invited us to sit down and gave us some water. He and his family are from Colombia (MY FAVORITE LATINO COUNTRY) so I just knew it was going to be good visit. He explained to us that has Colombian's they are always willing to listen to "the word" and then asked if we could share our message with him. We gladly accepted. I wish I could have taken a picture of their faces and we taught them, their eyes were all big and they were all smiles. While we were talking about prophets he even asked us if we have one today.... YES! Then he asked what his name was and loved the idea of President Monson. Him and his wife have two of the sweetest, littlest girls. For those of you who have served a mission you know that you could have solid investigators, but if the kids are crazy it isn't going to go anywhere, but ya know what? They were content just playing on the back porch doing their own thing. His wife works a lot, but we were able to schedule another appointment for Friday with the whole family. Oh, tambien when we gave them a copy of el Libro de Mormon, they looked like a 5 year old on Christmas. They were so excited to read it and we are just as excited to teach them.
I know that the whole afternoon leading up to is was just good ole' Satan trying to discourage us, but guess what? We still found them and they are THE COOLEST FAMILY EVER. You know before my mission I had these picture perfect ideal investigator lessons in my head, which have yet to happen, until this past week. What a blessing!
I love this gospel. I am grateful for the bad times and I am grateful for the good times and I am sooo grateful for the opportunity I get to share the good word with those that are prepared.
There were a ton of miracles I saw this week, but I don't have time to write them all. I'll save them for a rainy day.
Also, this day may or may not mark 6 months that I have been out. STOPPPP!
Con amor,
Hermana Brooks
It was Friday and we had set apart 4 hours for walking the streets of Orlando hoping to contact people and make our way to this one apartment complex we wanted to knock around in. Well along the way we met so many Anti-Christs. I don't think I have ever been bashed so much in my whole mission with a lot of "not to discourage you, but....." or the classic "you know Satan is the founder of your religion right?" So here we are getting bashed from almost every person we meet and arrive at the apartment complex. Now in order to see the picture and what a miracle this truly was I am going to describe the situation that happened next. So the apartment complex has two entrances about 60 feet apart and we saw a bike rider coming down so we ended up talking to him in the middle of the two. After we decided to walk to the one up the street a little bit and start our knocking there. We weren't having any success and half the apartments were vacant, but we kept knocking. We knock on this one apartment and *dun dun dunnn* someone came to look through the peephole, but didn't answer the door, so we head back down the stairs and about 4 seconds later a man opens the door from the top and is like "sorry we don't speak English..." Us: "habla espanol?" Him: "Si!" We go and explain to him about what we are doing as missonaries and he invites us in, which we wouldn't be able to do unless there is another women in the house and guess what? There was, his mother-in-law. He invited us to sit down and gave us some water. He and his family are from Colombia (MY FAVORITE LATINO COUNTRY) so I just knew it was going to be good visit. He explained to us that has Colombian's they are always willing to listen to "the word" and then asked if we could share our message with him. We gladly accepted. I wish I could have taken a picture of their faces and we taught them, their eyes were all big and they were all smiles. While we were talking about prophets he even asked us if we have one today.... YES! Then he asked what his name was and loved the idea of President Monson. Him and his wife have two of the sweetest, littlest girls. For those of you who have served a mission you know that you could have solid investigators, but if the kids are crazy it isn't going to go anywhere, but ya know what? They were content just playing on the back porch doing their own thing. His wife works a lot, but we were able to schedule another appointment for Friday with the whole family. Oh, tambien when we gave them a copy of el Libro de Mormon, they looked like a 5 year old on Christmas. They were so excited to read it and we are just as excited to teach them.
I know that the whole afternoon leading up to is was just good ole' Satan trying to discourage us, but guess what? We still found them and they are THE COOLEST FAMILY EVER. You know before my mission I had these picture perfect ideal investigator lessons in my head, which have yet to happen, until this past week. What a blessing!
I love this gospel. I am grateful for the bad times and I am grateful for the good times and I am sooo grateful for the opportunity I get to share the good word with those that are prepared.
There were a ton of miracles I saw this week, but I don't have time to write them all. I'll save them for a rainy day.
Also, this day may or may not mark 6 months that I have been out. STOPPPP!
Con amor,
Hermana Brooks