Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Chapel Heights: July 12-18

Hi everyone!

The best part of the week was that Lonnie, Dawn, Alison, and Lewis were all baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday! Everything went so smoothly during the services! We were a little worried as we were setting up, because the closet with all the baptism suits didn't have enough of the right size. We had to make some frantic phone calls and ended up borrowing some jumpsuits from the temple baptistery! Probably totally not supposed to happen. Thankfully things worked out! After each person was baptized, you could just see them glowing! They're all so happy! Alison told me that after she got out of the water, outside she was shivering and really cold but inside she felt really warm all over! Then when she was confirmed, she was blessed to serve a mission and at that moment it hit me that what I'm doing now not only affects those I teach but those that they will teach as well!

We just got back from serving at the temple. The semiannual two-week cleaning has begun! We were told to wear proselyting clothes there, but when we showed up they told us we needed to be wearing pants and tennis shoes...even though they were going to give us clothes to change into. So we went back and changed, and when we got back someone took us straight up to the Celestial room in t-shirts, jeans, and tennis shoes. That was so weird. They let us change right after that! We got to move around tons of furniture, vacuum, and clean lockers.

We met an amazing new investigator named Tana! We had planned to visit a referral that had been sitting in the area book for hundreds of days that we just found and were tempted to skip ahead to other plans for progressing investigators, but I felt prompted to see this referral anyway. Someone named Prince answered the door and said the referral didn't live there, and then his mom came to the door and invited us in! She's AMAZING! She shared her story with us and as she was talking, principles of the gospel came to mind that I know will help her so much! She told us she was really confused because of all of the different Christian religions and didn't know which one to join. The bible says there's "one Lord, one faith, one baptism”, so why are there so many different denominations? She told us she had prayed 20 minutes ago asking for guidance and as she said that, I could feel the Holy Ghost testify to me that her words were true and that we had been sent to her!

Cheryl is so sweet but also extremely absentminded and noncommittal, so we're dropping her for now. I know Heavenly Father will send missionaries to her again when she'll be ready to progress!

Apparently there's this new game out called Pokemon Go and it's getting all the gamers outside! Each church building (and the temple!) is a hotspot and there are always people walking around playing the game. It's been a great way for us to teach people! I think they've been cracking down on it at the temple though, since we don't see many people there any more.

One of the members in our ward asked us to mail a letter for him, and when we happened to come across a mailbox we stopped to drop the letter in and met someone named Mary! I'm always amazed at how Heavenly Father gets each person in the right place at the right time! Mary had just gotten off work.

One day we were waiting for a member to come out with us and he was running pretty late, but it was all in the Lord's timing! We tried to contact a referral and then saw two guys walking down the road named Gerardo and David who were really interested in learning more! We went back and had a solid lesson about the Restoration with Gerardo, and he's planning to be baptized on September 3!

We stopped by Serenity's apartment and met her amazing grandma named Debra! She's so sweet and has so much potential as we continue teaching her!

We met someone named Goldie several weeks ago and went back to teach her. She opened the door and told us she had been waiting since that day for us to come back!  Even though her kitchen had just flooded, she invited us right in and we taught her about the Restoration and then she asked us to teach her how to pray! She was so happy to hear that we address God by "Heavenly Father"!

We met a guy named Randy who was using a leaf blower who said he met two sister missionaries just like us two weeks ago! He then told us that he sees the light and joy that Mormons have!

I went on splits with an older lady in our ward and we planned to contact yet another referral. The house had tons of signs on it and one of them said "Jehovah's Witnesses: Keep out!" Since we're not Jehovah's Witnesses I decided to try our luck. We went up and knocked and I was kind of expecting whoever answers to ask us if we'd seen there sign and to please leave their property, but a really nice guy named Keith answered and he and the member really hit it off! Keith has the same question as Tana--there's been a lot of that lately--and the Spirit was so strong as we taught him!

We had planned to have a temple tour with Alison, Lonnie, and Dawn before they were baptized, but Alison got sick and they couldn't make it so we took a less-active guy named Shaun up to the temple instead! It was amazing to see the change occur in Shaun as we were there! It really helped him desire to change his life around. I know Heavenly Father arranged things perfectly so we could take Shaun instead! When we got there, we saw quite a few people from the Foothills YSA ward (my last area)! They had a ward temple trip then because it was the last day before the temple closed for a couple of weeks. It didn't hit me until then how much I miss that area! It's great here too!

I love you all!
Sister Bedont

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