Hi Family!
I GOT THE PACKAGES!!! I LOVE THE POPCORN AND I CAN'T WAIT TO OPEN THE REST ON CHRISTMAS!!! :) I shared (some) popcorn with my zone today and they loved it. :) Today we only have 2.5 hours for p-day since we have our mission Christmas party tomorrow and then all of Christmas is our p-day so we're compensating for that.
This week has been great! I want to tell you about Hailey. We were walking around the neighborhood before one of our appointments and out comes Hailey from one of the houses. I start talking to her (OYMing) and she's like yeah, talk to me while I'm walking! (my mind is going crazy because NO ONE says that to us) So I start by giving her the really short version of the restoration and ask her if she wants to hear more. I give her a copy of the Book of Mormon and ask her to start reading a little bit before our appointment the next day. Her dad had grown up Mormon we find out and that she does have family that's Mormon. She's been to church like twice when she was younger. She grew up Jehovah Witness, but they had left that church awhile ago so she's not going to any church right now. CRAZY! We take a young woman, Sydney, that's planning to go on a mission soon with us. We go there the next day, Tuesday, and we teach a powerful, POWERFUL lesson about the restoration. She totally understands the Great Apostasy because there are so many churches. While we were reciting the first vision, she clutched her chest and said "stop that!" She thought that we were doing something- it was the Holy Ghost. She said afterwards that she knew that the First Vision happened! GOLD MINE! We're like so happy to hear that and I testified that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that he did in fact see God and Jesus Christ. It was amazing! The spirit was so tangible. We soft committed her to baptism and she said yes, if she knew it was true. We also invited her to church and she said that she would like to come and we ask her to continue reading the Book of Mormon. She had read a lot of it already! All highlighted and everything. It's like a time warp in her house. We were there for an hour, but it felt like 10 minutes.
We go to her house again the next day, Wednesday, and teach her the Plan of Salvation and again she understood everything well and had some questions. We again took a member with us. The spirit was there again. She's again read a lot of the Book of Mormon and loves it. We asked her to be baptized again and it was the same answer. We hadn't prayed about a date to extend to her yet, so we didn't hard commit her. This lesson wasn't as powerful because she was a little distracted that day.
We set up another appointment for Friday to teach the third lesson. This time we prayed about a date for her and we felt like January 12th would be good. This lesson was as powerful as the first lesson. It's the Gospel of Jesus Christ- Faith, Repentance, Baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. When we're talking about Baptism and I felt prompted again to ask her to be baptized. This time with January 12th. The spirit was so strong, but she said that yes, but she needs to think about it! I asked her if she knew it was true. She said yes. She knows that Joseph Smith was a prophet, the Book of Mormon is true, and everything we've said is true! Gah! She did have the question of can you wait to get baptized later in life, like you can sin all you want and then have them washed away. I felt prompted to share Alma the younger story with repentance and how painful it is. We forgot to resolve concerns because it had already been an hour. Next time we're going to start with why she doesn't feel like she can be baptized. We're hoping that we can have her baptized this month since she's been progressing so fast! It's only been a week! Hailey is our golden investigator right now and it's been awesome to start from the very beginning with her. My first one where I've found her and now teaching her!!
Also this week, on Thursday, during our personal study Gina's name kept on bouncing in my head. Before we were going to leave the house I felt like we needed to go see Gina right then at 11. So we bike over there and when Gina opens the door, she's frazzled. Her daughter had just had oral surgery and was reacting badly from the pain meds. Her house was a mess because she had been sick the whole week ( we didn't know that), so we started cleaning up her kitchen and living room while she dealt with her daughter. Her daughter was becoming violent and everything because she was like hallucinating or something. It was pretty scary. So we cleaned part of her house and everything. We taught her a little lesson and gave her the Book of Mormon stories to read. Since she had ADHD reading the Book of Mormon is difficult for her, so we thought that the simplified version would be easier. We also talked about the Holy Ghost and if she had prayed about it. She had received the answer that she needed to learn more about Christ. Well, we thought that we had had a break though! We get a call on Sunday, because she wasn't at church so we had texted her asking if she was alright. She's been reading a lot of Anti (which is sad because she's believing it and can't get past the early church's history). We try to answer her questions and she texts us basically dropping us. Sad day. She hasn't been feeling the Holy Ghost because she doesn't allow us to teach her the lessons. Just to ask questions. She wants what we have, but just can't get past those things. Sad. So we call her back and she's like "don't be mad! I just have to learn more about Christ and have the foundation of the Bible and can't read the Book of Mormon right now." She did say that we could come by today. Hopefully we'll be able to give her that foundation of Christ that she wants and that she'll actually listen! I have faith and hope!
I know that Heavenly Father wants this for her, but she just has to listen and not be thinking of the next question that she's going to ask. Hopefully it'll go well. If we can't keep her as an investigator (she's dropped the missionaries twice before) then right now isn't the right time and I'm okay with that.
The work is progressing and I'm excited to be a part of it! We have two of our investigators, Sherry and Katie, on date for baptism. Both in January.
Let's see. I saw my first scorpion last night. They're small but still scary! Ick! They can come up the bathtub- they go through the pipes! Luckily we saw this one outside on our wall.
Love,
Sister Collins