December 11, 2017

No crazy rain this week! I mean, it rained a few times, but mostly it was hot. Got my first sunburn (haha). But afterwards I dug out my sunscreen and have been using it Always, don't worry.

And we had someone come to church yesterday! We had 9 committed and confirmed by the middle of the week, but it dwindled down to 4 Saturday night, and only 1 came. But one is better than none!

I had a couple cool experiences this week that I want to share, and then I'll work on pictures. Yes, there is a big chocolate factory here, but it's not in my area.  It is, however, right across the street from the chapel where we hold district meetings, and we're allowed to tour it on p-days. 

Experience #1: Always study the scriptures with a question! I'm pretty sure I've been told this several times throughout my life, but I never really applied it until my mission. But it's AMAZING! And I'm not talking about searching the topical guide or the gospel library app for answers to questions, or even flipping open to a random page and expecting to see the answer. That's cool too, but it doesn't have to be a big process. I'm working on finishing the book of Mormon again in English (I was almost done before my mission, and then almost done in the CTM, but now I'm really almost done haha) so I'm really just reading in order, but every single time, I write down a question before I start (with a prayer, of course) and I ALWAYS find an answer. Sometimes it's super obvious (like one day when my question was about helping people develop a desire to be baptized and then discovering that Moroni 6 (i think) is all about baptism) and sometimes it takes some creative interpretation (Moroni 7 is about infant baptism, but I still found amazing answers about hope), but it's Always there, I promise! Try it, and then write me about how it went :)

Experience #2: Pedro and the power of prayer...

So Pedro is our investigator that came to church this Sunday. We were having a pretty unfruitful day, and we stopped to do some studying (your spirit needs nutrition just as much as your body, it's just not as demanding), and when I prayed to close our study session, I prayed for Heavenly Father to place in our path someone who wanted to listen. And then quite literally right after I said Amen, this man came up and asked us if we were missionaries! Heavenly Father REALLY likes blessing His children, He just needs us to put down our spiritual umbrellas! ("Living the Gospel Joyful" by Dieter F Uchtdorf. Look it up, it's Worth it!)

Experience #3: "All who Wander are not lost" -JRR Tolkein, and also the cover of my journal

My companion commented on how cool my journal is, and I tried to translate the quote for her, but they don't have a word for "wander" (or I just don't know it) so it kinda didn't work out (haha). But anyways, one of the other quotes in it is "It feels good to be lost in the right direction." Not sure if I mentioned this yet, but my companion and I are generally lost most of the day. We think we've been all over the whole area, but we never remember what streets connect to what. (As we were walking to church yesterday, Pedro informed us that the route we usually take is pretty much a very big oval :P) It can be really frustrating at times, but usually it results in us finding people that we never could've found otherwise! Like Conceção. We were trying to visit someone else, but this someone lives on this one street that we've found at least twice, but Always through a different route, and with a lot of frustration. But anyways, we were looking for it once again, when we saw a woman sitting outside her house alone. Turns out her daughter was baptized about 20 or so years ago, and she's had a lot of contact with the church, but not in the past 10-ish years. And she wants to learn more! We didn't ask her to get up, just sat on the ground in front of her house and taught her about the gospel, and oh, it was amazing!

Experience #4: The bus terminal. I won't try to describe the horror and anxiety that this activity prompted, because that's really besides the point (even if it was hilarious), but one morning this week all of the missionaries in our zone went to a different bus station and basically spent 3 hours talking to EVERYBODY. It's really difficult to teach lessons in a crowded noisy bus station, when the person you're talking to might leave at any second, and also when they most likely don't live in your area, but it was a great learning experience! Between the 4 of us that live together, we passed out over a hundred Light the World cards! Not something I want to repeat, but it was fun :)

Ok that's it for now! Have an awesome week!

-Sister Kirkham