March 31, 2014

This week Sister Newman and I, on exchanges, went to visit Donna and Fred. I can't remember how much I've said about them, but they have been investigating the church for about 9 months now. Well, kind of. They like to talk so much that we haven't been able to teach them all the lessons yet, but they definitely have potential so we keep visiting them. The last time Sister Obeta and I went over there, Donna was practically in tears because she was under so much stress. There are a lot of different problems going on with her extended family, and she feels like she needs to take on everyone's problems. She had just gotten done telling us about everything she's been through, and just stared at us, waiting for us to magically fix all her problems. For a second I froze, having no idea what to say to her. She didn't want us to give some generic response like "well, Jesus Christ can help you with your problems!" She wanted a specific solution. We sat there in awkward silence for a minute, and then I said "Donna, have you been praying every day?" She hadn't. "Here's what you're going to do. Every night before you go to bed, and throughout the day when you remember, say a prayer. And instead of asking Heavenly Father to take away all your problems, just pray for peace. He's not just going to miraculously take away everything that's weighing on you, because those things are necessary for you to experience. And our prayers aren't always answered in the way we expect or the way that we want. But one desire that will always be granted to us is a prayer for peace." Well, we went back to visit them this week, and Donna was so much brighter. She told Sister Newman, "Sister Boll told me to pray for peace and I've been doing it every day, and it works!" She told us that her pastor had mentioned that she noticed a change in Donna, and Donna said, "that's because I'm meeting with the Mormon missionaries!" She started crying, and said that she knew we had been sent to her for a reason. The next day, we took Donna and Fred on a tour of the chapel, and they loved it. Fred loved the artwork and Donna loved all the pianos and the organ. They said they'd come to church next week, after general conference! 

This Sunday, we went around knocking on the doors of all the Marshallese people to remind them all about the Marshallese church meeting at 1:30. We weren't having any luck, since most of them went to Springdale for the weekend, and we became really discouraged and thought that nobody would come. We went to Isaiah's house, and he was home but the rest of his family was in Springdale and he couldn't leave the house without permission. But we waited at the church anyways, and at 1:30 Brother Bertrand said, "hey sisters...doesn't Isaiah's family drive a blue Chevy Tahoe? I just saw it pull up in the parking lot." I could have cried! We went outside to greet Isaiah and his whole family, plus another couple and their young daughter. Isaiah's dad, Jared, hadn't been to church in months before Isaiah's baptism, but this made two weeks in a row that their whole family came. It's so amazing to see what a difference a little kid can make in his whole family. I feel confident that their family will be able to be sealed in the temple next year. This week we had 19 people present in our church meeting, the most we've had since I've been here. And this was on a day that we thought nobody would show up. Heavenly Father is definitely working on the hearts of all those that we teach. 

This week I learned about how important consistency is. I had been thinking a lot about that topic and this Sunday the first counselor in the mission presidency came to speak to us and he ended up talking about it too! He talked about Dave Wottle, I think his name is, who came in first place in the Olympics for the 800 meter sprint. When people watched the race, it looked like he put in an extra burst of energy near the end to overtake everyone else, but in reality he was the only person who ran at a consistent speed while everyone else slowed down at the end. President Stout compared it to our lives and how sometimes we go through spiritual spurts of trying to take on a lot at once when we should really be working a little at a time to form consistent habits of spiritual living. I think about that a lot because I was kind of like that in middle school and high school, because I would go to girls' camp or efy and feel really spiritually uplifted for a few weeks afterwards, but I didn't really make good habits of scripture study and prayer on my own. Those things are more important for our long term spiritual well-being than just having one really awesome spiritual experience.