I experienced the coolest miracle of my entire mission this week!!!
Okay, don't get me wrong, I have lots of really awesome miracles every day, but with this particular miracle, I saw the effects of it immediately! It happened on Tuesday night. We had just got out of a reaaaalllyyyyy long lesson with an older gentleman who lives in our apartment complex who loves to talk. He talked our ears off for TWO WHOLE HOURS. Ugh it was so long. My ADD mind was going insane! hahaha! All of our appointments fell through, so we got into our car and pulled off to the side of our apartment complex parking lot. We prayed about what we should do because neither of us felt right about tracting, and the members we had put in as back ups all had young children who we knew were in bed. It was 8 at night. We sat there in silence as we both thought about what to do and I had a random thought, "We need to go to the church!" I tried to decide if that was just me thinking it, or if God used the spirit to direct my thoughts. I wondered why we would need to go to the church because there wouldn't be anyone there - our ward's mutual had been cancelled for the week due to an upcoming temple trip this weekend. The thought came again, "We need to go to the church!!!" I decided that it wouldn't hurt to say my thought out loud to see what Sister WIlliams thought. If she shut it down, then we'd figure something else out. I said out loud, "Hey Sis Williams, I just had a thought that we need to go to the church right now." To my surprise (mostly because she disagrees with me on nearly everything) Sister Williams IMMEDIATELY said without a moment's hesitation, "GO TO THE CHURCH." I was only taken aback for a split second before I put the car into drive and headed toward our church building. It was hilarious! On the way there I wondered aloud, "I wonder who God wants us to meet at the church tonight....hmmm!" We pull into the church parking lot where there are two cars parked on one side. We said a prayer and walked in. There was a man with three kids sitting on the couch in the foyer. I introduced myself and found out that they're actually from the Gainesville ward. The man was the ward mission leader! We talked with him for a few minutes about the work in both of our wards before he asked what we were doing there. We told him that we didn't know exactly, but we were following a prompting that the Lord had given us to come to the church. The ward mission leader smiled and said, "Wow. There is a non member using my cell phone in the other room. He wanted to talk to your Bishop to see if he could take the missionary lessons and get some help with a few things." My jaw just dropped. :O "Sweet," I said, "God is so good! There is no way I believe in coincidences!!!" We talked with him and his three kids until the non member guy was done talking on the phone. We introduced ourselves and found out his name is Jay. Jay went to SVU for college and knows a TON of Mormons. We just got to know his religious background and listened to him talk for an entire hour while he told us how he chooses to live the Word of Wisdom because it makes sense to him and also how he's been told that he's a Mormon in denial. He's had a few girls tell him that they couldn't marry him because he wasn't Mormon, and he's also seen a lot of members go through the motions of getting a temple recommend that they were never worthy of. He said that people at SVU used to try to convert him all the time because they wanted him to be their "convert trophy". We just listened to him. He really needed to talk. At the end, we shared with him a few verses from the Book of Mormon. I pulled out my extra copy that I always carry with me and held it in both hands. I told him that this book means the world to me. I told him that I don't want to force it down his throat because he means so much more than a trophy to me. I started to say more, but he cut me off to ask for a copy of his own. It was awesome! He then was the one to ask us to meet up again. He said, "Now, I know you'll probably try to meet with me again to try to convert me or something. I don't know what protocol is for this, but..." he thought for a minute, "Do you have a piece of paper? I'll give you my phone number" He went from talking himself out of meeting with us, but then talked himself back into it! It was the funniest thing!! It was cool to see the spirit working on him. We made a return appointment with him for Saturday.
This was such a cool miracle! I mean, I have promptings from the spirit every day. I do my very very best to follow them, but I've never seen anything quite so significant come from it. Who knows why God gave me those promptings before? I have no idea! But I hope someone's life was a little better off because of it! Maybe God gave me those previous promptings to go to a certain place to get me out of the way of a potential car accident or something. Either way, it doesn't matter! All that matters is that we act on the promptings taht the Lord gives us. This time, the result of acting was finding a man who is so desperately needs the gospel in his life. God truly is behind this work.
We taught him at the church again on Saturday. It was a great lesson. We taught him the Restoration and he understood it all so well. He was able to tell us his understanding of the priesthood and apostasy in his own words. It was one of the best lessons ever. We put him on date for November 22. He is one of the most prepared people I have ever met!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited for him!! :) :) :)
We taught our other investigators in members homes this week. We taught Ashleigh in the bishop's home! It was the best lesson we've ever had with her! We taught her about repentance and she asked, "Will you teach me what all of the commandments are? I don't know them, but I want to keep them!" :) She's progressing so much. We also had a lesson with Rahfi in the Thiriots' home. They're the seminary teachers in the ward and they have seminary in their basement. We went down there for our lesson and used some of the seminary videos and visuals to help Rahfi, who comes from a Muslim background, to understand the atonement of Jesus Christ. It was wonderful!
The work is working! And I know it's because God's the one behind everything. He's soooo good.
I'm doing so well. I'm still learning a lot as a trainer, especially patience and humility, which are great lessons to learn.
I love you all so much! Keep reading the Book of Mormon! It can change your life daily if you let it! All you have to do it read, ponder and pray about it!
Have a great week!
Love,
Sister Anderson
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