Monday, March 1, 2010

Snow plows are like missionaries...

More snow this week! I don't even know where they are going to put it all! We still were able to go out and work though, but once again the muscles are sore from shoveling. Don't judge the picture of us shoveling snow...it doesn't look like we did a lot but we just really wanted to get a picture of us shoveling in front of that house because that is one of our houses of many men that we are teaching. We just write in our schedules "19 Henry St" as back-up a lot of time and catch whoever is there (Ranferi, Luis, Jose, Ezequiel). Maybe one day, they will all come to church together! We're working on that. :) Right now, getting people to church is seriously the only thing stopping so many of these people from getting baptized. Pray our investigators can come to church! Everybody here just works their tails off and that includes on Sundays, so they can never come! And it seems like the harder we work at it every week, the fewer that come...hmmm...
So we had some really neat experiences this week where the Spirit was leading us when we didn't even know it. There were a couple of nights when all of our appointments fell through and we had about half an hour before going inside. Since it was the end of the month, we didn't have too many miles left we could go on our car so we had to be really creative with where we went. One night, we decided to go by for this guy we had contacted about a month ago but never gotten ahold of. We go to this house, knocked on one door, and asked for Jorge. They didn't know who he was and told us to try the back door (remember, every door is a different household). So we go to the back, knock on the door (it's snowing, by the way) and some guy answers the door and lets us in. We asked for Jorge and they had no idea who he was but then we just asked if we could share a message with them. They let us sit down and introduced themselves as Leonel, Benjamin, and Hector, all from Honduras. We got to talking and before long, Hector says, "I had some friends back in Honduras named Elders. We became really good friends and they baptized me. Actually, they baptized my whole family, but the rest of my family is still in Honduras. When I moved here to make more money, I had to work on Sundays so I have never been to church here, but now I only work on Sundays sometimes." What the heck?!?! And not even to mention that that was the 2nd person we found this week who had been baptized in Honduras and moved here and gotten lost along the way. It is crazy how that happens. Records get lost a lot along the way but it is just a testimony to me that the Lord knows His sheep. Like it says in Doctrine and Covenants 50:41-42, "Fear not, little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world, and you are of them that my Father hath given me; And none of them that my Father hath given me shall be lost."
In other news, we met with Wilson again (our fast little Ecuadorian man) and he starts out by asking, "Do you believe people can change and be better? Because I think...." And off he went with all his ideas and stuff and it was awesome. So we taught him about faith, repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end and he was just loving it. We invited him to be baptized and he said that in a year he will, once he has read the whole Book of Mormon, unless he feels like God tells him to get baptized sooner. Haha, we can definitely work with that. We also invited him to church but he said he wants to look nice when he comes so he needs to save up and go shopping for some new clothes. Haha, this guys just cracks me up and he just loves the lessons. Everything just makes so much sense to him. More updates to come... :)
To explain the title of this week's email, that is a bit of wisdom I came up with while driving around the other day with Hna Evens. The streets are covered in snow and you see snowplows just driving right over them without the plow down (I saw it a lot in Utah too). I felt like saying, "Hey, there is snow all over this road that needs to be moved and you have the ability to do so...so do it!" And then I thought, that's like missionaries...so many times, missionaries just walk right on by people who need help and we can help them! If we just put the plow down and go to work, it's amazing the difference we can see in what happens. I love the tools we have as members of the church to help and lift people in need. Use them! :)
I guess that's about it for today. I hope things are going well back home. Take care on tour, Malcolm. And Megan, don't worry about sending the last part of the package, we're fine. :) I miss you tons but I love you more!
Love,
Hermana Jackson

No comments:

Post a Comment