I HAD AN AWESOME WEEK. things are really starting to pick up around here in good ole Ashburn!
Tuesday. We have been asking everyone that we talk to for referrals lately. It's been pretty cool. We ask questions like, "Who do you know who has had a recent death in the family?" or "Who do you know that has struggling teenagers?" instead of "Who do you know that would be interested in this message?" and we've been seeing a lot of success. The week before we asked a guy if he knew of anyone who had suffered a death in the family, and he said that his neighbor lost his wife about six months ago. So Tuesday night we decided to go check in on that neighbor.... he was nice enough, but not interested. It's been cool to see how asking for referrals and then following up with them has brought us miracles-even if the referral that we received wasn't interested. Right As we were walking out of his apartment building, we saw a woman walking the opposite direction from us. Sis Savage and I made eye contact and then kicked it into high gear to catch up to her! It was so fun! When we were a close enough distance away, Sis Savage called out, "Hey can I give you a card to a website?" In an instant, the woman glanced back to look at us, screamed at the top of her lungs, and ran away. I mean, she BOOKED it. My first thought was that she had met missionaries before and that was her way of getting out of talking to us... So naturally I started laughing pretty hard. I just couldn't help it! We walked in the direction of where she ran, and saw her at the foot of the stairs of the apartment building with her hand over her heart. She apologized and said that she just gets scared easily. That made me laugh even harder! We introduced ourselves and she looked at our name tags. She said, "Oh, you come to talk about Jesus? Follow me!" She lead us into her apartment. Sis Savage and I tried really hard to start teaching her, but I could tell that after a few minutes the woman was getting antsy. So we made a return appointment with her for the next day adn prayed with her. MIRACLE. Her name is Hodalo and she's from West Africa. She speaks French, so I think there's a bit of a language barrier.... but luckily we have a member in our ward who is fluent in French! :)
Wednesday we had our lesson with Hodalo and her sweet girls. She has a five year old who always says things like, "Jesus is my best friend. He protects my heart." So cute. It was an okay lesson. Kinda rough, seeing that that was the first time Sis Savage and I taught a real lesson together. We'll get used to each other's teaching styles pretty quick though, so I'm not worried. It was a good lesson. We brought one of the laurel's from the ward with us, and she cried when she talked about Joseph Smith's story. It was so cool! Later that night, we got a message saying that we have some media referrals from church HQ that need to be updated. So we looked them up online and saw that we had a referral from the beginning of NOVEMBER! What. I was confused as to why I didn't get a notification about it earlier when it was sent in... Oh well. We decided to go and check on that family because they had requested a copy of the Book of Mormon! We knocked on their door and they let us right in! They're from Liberia! More Africans to teach!!! Woo! They said we could come back the next day too! MIRACLE.
Thursday and Friday we had to teach at two zone conferences. We taught for a portion in the Ashburn zone, which is our zone, on Thursday, and then on Friday we taught at the Leesburg Zone conference because all of the sisters that are within our stewardship are in that zone. President Riggs asked us to demonstrate teaching using "How To Begin Teaching" found in chapter 10 of Preach My Gospel. How to Begin Teaching is a fundamental that missionaries need to know to set expectations with investigators and get to know them while still being a professional representative of Jesus Christ in the first lesson. We made it really fun. We first demonstrated how to get to know them while purposefully forgetting to be professional about it. Then we demonstrated how to be super professional to the extreme and pretended to be robots. Finally we practice taught it the right way. We got a good laugh from our audiences both times, so I felt really good about it. :)
OH MY. Also. One of the assistants to the president has been acting REAL friendly to me lately. He goes home at the end of this transfer, and he has taken a creepy liking to me. He keeps coming up and talking to me...which I wouldn't usually mind except he's really awkward about it. Okay. Freak out moment over.
Saturday we had a whole mission conference because Elder Hallstrom of the 70 and Elder Perkins came to talk to us. They only took two hours to teach us, but it was just what I needed. Elder Perkins taught about faith and Elder Hallstrom talked about what a successful missionary is. He talked a lot about how the leaders of the church want all missionaries to be completely converted and to be true disciples of Jesus Christ. It was just cool because I've been reflecting on my mission lately and I've been able to see how much I've changed since Christ has been the center focus of everything that I do. He also talked about how returned missionaries that stay converted are always serving others-True conversion really does come when you forget about yourself and put others first- as well as reading the scriptures, praying and going to church and the temple regularly. I decided then and there that I WILL stay converted after my mission by doing all those things.
Sunday night we ran into a less active returned missionary. It was so easy to see that he let himself lose his conversion after his mission because he stopped studying the Book of Mormon and praying, which then lead him to stop going to church. So sad. But it was interesting to see him and his life right after we talked about it at the mission conference the day before.
Man, God is good. The work is still tough, but it's picking up adn I'm so grateful for it! Sis Savage is a super hard worker, and an answer to my prayers. Before transfers, I asked God to give me a hard working companion that would help me push myself on the home-stretch of my mission. I'm going to do all I possibly can! I want to come home exhausted! I want to be able to say that I left it all on the court.
Love,
Sister Anderson
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