July 25, 2017 "Church in the Dark"

Church in the Dark

Dear friends and family, this week was pretty awesome and pretty crazy. 

We were blessed to see many miracles as well as learn from some crazy experiences.

So Ill just go through the week:

Wednesday - We were on morning shift at the Jail and it was a rainy morning so we hadn't had anyone come in, until the sweetest Brazilian family arrived! There were 2 families, one came from Brazil and was visiting their childhood friends who had later moved to the states. The Brazilians couldn't speak much English, but the other family that had moved to America would translate for them. Needless to say, it was quite a different tour than usual. But the family was so sweet. You could tell they really were prepared to have a spiritual experience. Because they had to translate, I would have to just say like one sentence and then wait. I had to be very concise and simple in what I said. I believe that it was because they were prepared, and because I had to teach so simply, that it allowed the Holy Ghost to come in and testify so powerfully. At the end we sang together "I Need Thee Every Hour" half in english and have in Portuguese and the Spirit was so strong! One of the ladies told me that she could understand a lot of what I was saying because the Spirit was able to help her. Never thought I would experience the Gift of Tongues on my mission thats for sure!

Thursday - We had some training meetings and we had a pretty busy shift at the Jail but that evening we did service with one of the youth/"young adults" in our ward. (Brooke Gallup) She is a hoot! We are like BFFs with her, and it has been the coolest thing because we are trying to start working with her nonmember friend who she has been best friends with ever since they were little. Rachel is her friend and we had gotten together in a chill setting a couple weeks ago, but Bishop Gallup told us that she had shown interest in meeting with us again! She was like, "are all missionaries that cool??" :)) Haha anyway, but thursday night we thought we would get together with them again, and we ended up making Brooke's famous cookies and going and delivering them to people. IT WAS SO FUN. They are so fun to be around and we just told stories and got to know her better and we are meeting again for an actual lesson this week!

Friday - Full pros. day. Meaning we get the whole entire day to be out in our area. We were stoked because we had a bunch of lessons planned! So first we had a lesson with Felicia and Bren and his siblings!! If you recall, this is the little boy and the mom who are friends with a member, Bren said he wanted to be baptized and wanted to come to church, and Felicia (Bren's mom) we met at a members home and she was interested in meeting with us! It has been a few weeks because they are such a busy family but we finally were able to meet with them!! Felicia is the sweetest lady ever and she was intent on having all her kids ( who are: Jazz 16, Sway 14 and then Bren 12) to listen to our message. We taught pieces of the restoration and read out of the Book of Mormon, Felicia seems to still be more on the curious side of learning but Bren is all in and wants to come to church every week!! :) 

Our other appointments ended up cancelling. (the Sanfords, a part member family, and our investigator Erica and her daughter Maritza (age 14)). However, we were able to see Maritza who told us we could come back, gave us her number, said she had been reading the Book of Mormon, and really likes having us over! so we are going to meet with her tonight :))  

That evening, we met with a man named Mike. Now how we got this appointment was from texting all the investigators in our phone and asking if they wanted to meet with missionaries again. We didnt know all of them, but we got this message back from Mike who said he would love to meet with us! We were floored!
Then we looked at his teaching record. This guy was dropped because he was antagonistic with missionaries and not really intent on learning. Soooo we were like okay great. Well we already set up the appointment, so we figured we couldnt just bail or else he would keep bugging us or something. We had the appointment at a teaching room at the jail, and brought our ward mission leader and a ward missionary as backup. 

At first this guy seemed like the golden investigator, but the spirit was just telling Sister Draper and I to not believe him, that his story was not genuine. He has this whole sob story about how he has come to Jesus but from the moment we began, we could tell this guy had his own agenda in meeting with us. I dont want to go into much other detail other than the spirit was completely withdrawn and we could do nothing to answer this guys questions, because his heart was too hard. He tore down our testimonies and tried to get us to deny our faith. Literally an Antichrist. A wolf in sheeps clothing. Needless to say once again, that Sister Draper and I got home and just cried. But if anything, that encounter only made my testimony even stronger. It showed me the reality of the opposition that is in the world. There are people who will literally go out of their way to oppress Christ's church. But I know what I know. And I know what I have felt and it is the truth.

Okay now onto a happier/funnier note.... Sunday. Saturday night was the craziest storm. The wind was so loud and so strong and there was a strobe light of lighting into our room the whole night. Right as we were going to bed however, the storm knocked the power out at our house. We were like dang, ok, well its whatever because we can just sleep. But oh no, when the power goes out, that means that the air conditioning stops working too. Now this is the week that the heat index has been 110 because of the suffocating humidity. SO we sweat and did not sleep. We woke up and it was still out and we didnt know what to do and apparently like half of Liberty didnt have power either so that means that the Jail didnt have power and so they were going to close it. ANYWAYs very crazy morning. the church didnt have power so we didnt know if we were going to have church, but then our HOUSE GOT BACK POWER thankfully right after we got ready, lol. So the jail got back power so we went to go be on shift before going to church.

Even though the power was out we still had church! Literally (ill attach pictures in another email) but we had sacrament in the dark with a whole bunch of lanterns and a karaoke microphone .. it was crazy! Kinda cool though and it was actually a way spiritual meeting. We literally only had sacrament, no talks, but they still held church because WE GOT A NEW BISHOP!!!!! didnt see that one coming at all, but Bishop Gallup is now the 2nd counselor in the stake presidency, and now BROTHER RUSSELL IS OUR BISHOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! soooo blessed. WE love them so much and we are gonna see sooo many miracles. it was a wonderful day.

We ate with some awesome members and had a bomb lesson with the Staffords finally! Cedae and Marcy and everyone and we taught them the plan on salvation and Bella the other daughter who is like 9 said she wanted to be baptized!!! yayyyyyy!!! She also asked in the prayer at the end if the plan was true and it was so cute. I love her simple faith. 

ANyways it was just a pretty good week. 

In my studies i studied all about the Spirit. I learned so much about the nature of the holy ghost and how it works with us. We all know those simple answers, but as i immersed myself in talks and scriptures and preach my gospel, I really saw more clearly how the Holy Ghost was influencing me in subtle ways this week. I am so grateful we have a member of the Godhead to help us always. 

Overall, during the good and the bad, the testing times and the blissful times I truly am just happy to be a representative of Jesus Christ. There is always something we can learn and some way we can grow to be like our Savior. We need never get down on ourselves, but we can be happy simply because Christ lives because He allows us to change and He comforts us through change and through it all.

Church is true!

Love you all. Happy half-way to Christmas!

Sister Bleak

Talks to read:

Teaching After the Manner of the Spirit Oct 2011 

Developing Our Talent for Spirituality April 2001

"Lest Ye be Wearied and Faint in Your Hearts" May 1991 Ensign

Prayer and Promptings Oct 2009

Pics:
Brooke!
Cutest Brazilian family
I caught a frog
Compy floral and Jesus
Car ride
Felicia reading the BOM :)
Our power outage fiasco play by play
Disclaimer - it was Brooke that took those pics at church. But it
shows you want it was like!
Tree down
And lastly we have elder and sister Hansen (I think I attached this)
but this is what happens when we have downtime on shift 😂