Missionary Moment

With a new semester, comes new visiting teaching assignments. I got an awesome new companion, who was already my friend and we both did EFY this summer (even though in different states), so you can imagine our nerdy excitement to be teachers together. To add to this excitement we got assigned the ONLY nonmember in the whole ward. I will call her Mary for this post. She is from Guatemala, and lives in the only house in the ward. No one seemed to know much about her. We were determined!

Sunday we went over and she was not there, so we stayed and chatted with her roommate, asking her questions about her. Not but five minutes later, guess who should walk in?? Mary. She told us we were really lucky to catch her. She also asked immediately if we were her visiting teachers. She had had them before, but they would just come by and visit like a friend. We responded by "well, would you like a lesson?" She said yes she would! However, she has also been sent missionaries plenty of times, and didn't like that, so we agreed to meet back up on Thursday to give her a special lesson. We stayed and got to know her that day and we were so excited she was so chill and willing to work with us.

Thursday comes around, and all the sudden, my companion and I end up with a MILLION other things that came up right around the time we said we would teach Mary. I had our first girls intramural volleyball tournament game, and we were on a winning streak, but also could not forfeit any more times if not enough girls showed up. I was also supposed to have a flag football game before that, and dinner group that ran late. My companion had canceled a date, and was wanting to go to a workout class later. I tried and tried calling Mary to see if we could come earlier, but she didn't answer her phone or the door. My companion and I decided we would push everything aside for our original 8:00 pm appointment. We prepared for about a half hour, using preach my gospel, an old talk from her brother, and lots of prayer and discussion. We decided to talk about families (which worked well because the vt lesson this month was even about strengthening families). We were sooo excited and feeling great and were hoping she would be there.

We get there. That same roommate comes to the door and we discover Mary is not home. We were soooo sad, but I had randomly decided to bring along the notepad we had used to write some scriptures on and we sat at their table writing a note and chatting with that roommate. For some reason this took about 15 minutes. At 8:15 who should walk through the door?? Mary! She gave us big hugs and said sorry and she somehow left her phone home that day and she would never let this happen again. We were just so excited, we went right into the living room and started with a prayer soon after that. We went into the importance of families, and how we love them and want to be with them forever; Mary loves her family, she has a German dad, latina mom, a younger sister and older brother. We talked a little about the temple because she had had questions about hat before. It was a really good discussion and I shared my testimony about families and personal experiences, including a little about Ally, and how I have peace in my life with the knowledge of the gospel. We also discussed being children of God, and we are all kind of a family. We also said even though not all families are perfect (including Mormons), that the truth is always the same, and if we live our life like the Family Proclamation says, with faith, prayer, repentance, etc and basing our homes around Christ, happiness is possible. I also bore my testimony to this, and how the gospel was just good.The Spirit was so strong, my companion and I definitely felt it, we just hope Mary did too. We think she did by some of the expressions on her face and honest questions she asked us. She is going to watch conference this weekend with another friend, so maybe something will really strike home with her!

I know I learned a valuable lesson about trusting in putting the gospel first in my life. We could have just given up and done those other things, but we decided this was such a unique opportunity to share the gospel, we would definitely put visiting teaching and the Lord first. Even though our first visit "counted" for this month, we would have missed out on soo much more if we would have left it at that. Not only did I get an awesome experience, but someone got to hear my testimony and learn a bit more about the church. This is also an even stronger testimony of putting a little more into visiting teaching (even though I do try to most of the time). How appropriate considering we just heard the general Relief Society broadcast! Can I just say I love Relief Society? It really is such an inspired program. And even though Satan in trying to prevent us from building the kingdom, the marvelous work continues to move forth!

Who would have thought I had missionary opportunities in Provo??