April 23 ,2011

Hi Family!

Busy week as always! We really focused on calling all of our investigators. Since being in Guest Services we get tons of phone calls, both coming in and going out so we have LOTS of people to get a hold of. And I am embarrassed to say that we have actually forgotten about 50% of them, who they are and such. Awkward! So during our weekly planning we put them all into our schedules and honestly felt very overwhelmed. But we can do it! Funny though, now that we actually made a game plan on how to do all of this, they take our "motors time" (aka computer time when we call everyone) away! Gah, so frustrating. So we had to come in on our meal breaks in an effort to get a hold of people. Something about skipping meals to keep doing missionary work makes me feel good, like I am giving my all for the cause. We go to bed tired but really happy. By the way I am not being prideful. Go read Alma 26 and then judge me. But trying to call 18 people in one hour is hard but I love it and I love how busy we are. Every moment is productive and well spent. It is so great when you have a companion who is willing to put forth 200%! So much is accomplished as we try our best to be our best!

So I have been really working on praying with faith since I realized that my prayers are... not good. Anyway, so I am working on it. And this story comes from when I was attempting to pray with faith to find the searching man we had planned for. We came out of our district meeting on Wednesday and hit the Square anxious to find people to talk to (district meetings always get us fired up) and we saw this guy reading the quotes behind the flagpole. We started talking to him and I noticed that he was holding a Bible (first thought: ANTI!) But as we talked more he had made many mistakes in his life. He was saved in 2008 (honestly what does that even mean?), and continuing to study more of God's word so he could continue to "bring himself in line with the Almighty God". He was a walking TV evangelical preacher but he was searching for a church and more truth. Bingo! Welcome to Temple Square! We ended up taking him to the Assembly Hall and then to the North Visitors Center to talk more about the Book of Mormon. It was quickly apparent that he wasn't interested in any of the kiosks but just wanted to get to the word aka scriptures. He opened up his Bible and started reading scriptures. This tour was one of learning for me such as:

1) Why we as Sister Missionaries don't carry the Bible around? Answer: Because Sister Nelson goes crazy trying to prove our religion by using the Bible. Don't worry I contained myself because when I showed him one verse and we had complete opposite ideas on what it meant I remembered, "Oh yeah, go Book of Mormon!"

2) Brevity and clarity are key for understanding and the spirit to be there. He had us sit down and said, "I am going to read to you a few verses from the Bible to help you understand" So he read the ENTIRE chapter of Galatians 3. I totally zoned out and have no idea what his point was in reading it to us. When finished he said, "What do you think of that?!" Uh.... Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God? Anyway we only share 1 verse and let it sink in, He failed at this.

3) Analogies and metaphors (when used appropriately) are great teaching tools. He acted out the process of repentance for us which was really good and I am going to use it. We kept saying Yes! Yes! You are right but we were on different levels of understanding that whatever we said was misinterpreted.

I realized that this conversation was going nowhere and we needed to end it before it got argumentative. We tried to bring the spirit back by testifying of the Book of Mormon and Christ's church restored on the earth again. He said "No" to missionaries because he felt no hope in our church. The only way to get to heaven was to "get inside that big Temple"... which is true... but he thought that you had to be perfect to go inside. When we said that we had been inside he said, "Oh... really? You two went inside? But you are just normal people." He then signed the referral card for missionaries. I am still not sure whether to be offended or not.

We had a mission training with Elder Porter from the 1st Quorum of the Seventy. We had training on not letting them get away just because they said no. Overbearing? Maybe but they said when it is filled with love it isn't overbearing.... still wrapping my brain around that. But then they gave talks like a devotional which is awesome since we don't ever have that! They talked about not getting discouraged and how the Gospel can take years to affect people's lives. The next day we got paged by the APs telling us to come down to Guest Services since Elder Porter wanted an "Office Tour". We waited about an hour for him. Then Elder and Sister Porter and President and Sister Holmes came and we gave them all the rundown of Guest Services, how we schedule the tours and keep the mission running smoothly. President Holmes said that they place Sisters in here who they trust not to ruin the image of the Church. Pressure much? He said we have about 2 seconds to uplift the image of the Church and we successfully do it over the phone. That made me feel kinda special. We have to put up with a lot of obnoxious, crude,and rude phone calls so we just kill them with kindness. It is great to be working in so many places and to see all the miracles that come with gathering the prepared people of the world. And there are many of them; just keep looking!

That was our week! Hope life is treating you all well! Until next week! Oh and Happy Easter! (Sorry holidays are not acknowledged/ forgotten here on Temple Square)