October 15, 2011

Talofa!

Where to begin with this week!? It was one of my favorites in my mission thus far (and that is saying something). From when I last wrote we have mostly been at Welfare Square with a few hours here and there on the Temple Square. Sunday we were asked to help with "announcing" where Sisters stand outside that tabernacle and announce that there are tours in different languages. A man approached us asking if he could take a tour. We usually would say to join the group that is going with the English-speaking Sister but we decided we would take him around. He was awesome - searching for truth, really confused about all those churches out there. You know just a typical product of the apostasy and a shoo-in to accept the fact that a Restoration happened. The neatest moment was when we had him translate Moroni 10:4-5 from Russian for us (he speaks Russian so it wasn't completely random) so he had to really think about each word in the verse. We stood there as he pieced it together and we invited him to learn more, which he accepted. We will call to teach him more soon!

The rest of the week we were at Welfare Square, which isn't our typical schedule but they had meetings so life was crazy. Anyway we have made goals to help us make every stop full of the spirit and relate everything back to Jesus Christ, not hard to do when you are talking about welfare because Jesus Christ set up the perfect system. People (not members) have come through and asked, "How do you get your members to donate their time and money?" We simply say, "The Church just asks them to do it." Mouths drop. Everything runs so smoothly; there is no way it could have been conjured up by men but only through a perfect person with perfect motives, “To lift those that cannot lift themselves.” We have already seen so many hearts change (mean, grumpy people in the beginning to happy people by the end... I am sure the free samples of chocolate milk and cheese help). But when we don't have tours we help with "hosting" or filling their food orders. It has been so busy and tours are starting to be less and less so two days in a row we spent 12 noon to 4:30 p.m. running around and filling orders. We took naps when we got home instead of dinner. So we have made friends with all the workers at Welfare Square too. We watched as they filled bottles of cookies and cream milk and asked them if we could have one. Not only did they bring us bottles but offered to give us a personal tour of them making butter and cottage cheese! We didn't have time, but next time we will do it, hairnets and all.

We had an amazing morning today with alcoholics anonymous checking out Temple Square. We decided we love them all very much because they understand the atonement without understanding the gospel. All you need to do is testify and invite. We don't speak Spanish but managed to get three Spanish referrals in an hour! We felt grateful that the Lord put us in the right place at the right time. It was nothing we did; they were prepared; we were just the harvesters. Then we took a super less-active family around. Talk about awkward tour. We figured we needed to salvage it somehow so Sister Mata'utia had a great idea to take them through God's Plan for His Family. It did the trick and they were all crying by the end. Even if they didn't make the decision now to go back to church they felt the spirit and they know that it is true. The rest is up to them. Well, gotta run but until next week!