Dear Family and Friends:
We finally had investigators come to church! We usually only have one and he goes to a different ward because he works out of the area on the weekends. But we had three others come yesterday and they loved it!
I don't think I understood how important church was until I came on the mission. It's a commandment. We can be teaching someone and they can have everything in line and a super strong testimony, but if they are not going to church, they can't be baptized. And even though church can sometimes be boring or we learn nothing new, it is so important that we go. It is part of the whole enduring to the end and being obedient thing. :)
This last week my companion and I fasted for the area. As I have said before, it's one of the hardest in the mission because for some reason the members won't work with us. And they are key to the work. So we fasted and told Heavenly Father that we were going to focus on the members this week. We made plans accordingly to visit a lot more members and have them commit to work with us. And it has been working!
There was one member we specifically are hoping to have success with. Her name is Sister Abraham and shes the stake presidents wife. She is one of those people that probably stresses a little more than she should because she is always going going going helping others. So we went to visit them and we were going to give them the usual commitment to help "prepare a soul" as we say. We just give her a pamphlet and put our information on it and tell her to give it to one of her friends and then commit to work with us after introducing and preparing them. But as we sat talking to her, we both got the impression that wasn't what we were supposed to do. She left the room at one point to go take care of something and I turned to my companion and said, "I think we need to serve her." She smiled and told me that's what she was feeling too.
We shared with her a service scripture and then told her that we wanted to serve her and she couldn't say no. So she finally said that she wanted to learn how to cook an American dish. So she told us that she would pay for the ingredients if we would come cook dinner on Friday night. So we accepted.
So we showed her how to make mashed potatoes and gravy. She had only ever had it at KFC here so she was excited to learn. I showed her how to do everything and she just loved them. She said that she didn't want to put the gravy on the potatoes because they tasted super good by themselves. (That's because these people don't really know what butter is.) The kids were freaked out by it though because there was no rice. She ended up having to make it for them anyways. More potatoes for me! :)
We left her with a gratitude journal and told her to write in it every day. We told her that if she would be more grateful and see the little things in every day, she would be less stressed. We are taking it kinda slow with this relationship, but we hope to be able to have some success with investigators someday down the road because of her.
I know this church is true. I can see it every day as I watch people recognize the Spirit for the first time. I see it in the faithfulness of my companion. And thankfully, I'm seeing it in the gift of tongues as I am finally starting to catch on more. I am understanding more and more every day as I open my mouth. My mission president told me that it takes 30,000 mistakes before we are fluent in a language. We can decide how fast we want to make those mistakes.
Thank you! Love you all!
~Sister Lefebvre
We finally had investigators come to church! We usually only have one and he goes to a different ward because he works out of the area on the weekends. But we had three others come yesterday and they loved it!
I don't think I understood how important church was until I came on the mission. It's a commandment. We can be teaching someone and they can have everything in line and a super strong testimony, but if they are not going to church, they can't be baptized. And even though church can sometimes be boring or we learn nothing new, it is so important that we go. It is part of the whole enduring to the end and being obedient thing. :)
This last week my companion and I fasted for the area. As I have said before, it's one of the hardest in the mission because for some reason the members won't work with us. And they are key to the work. So we fasted and told Heavenly Father that we were going to focus on the members this week. We made plans accordingly to visit a lot more members and have them commit to work with us. And it has been working!
There was one member we specifically are hoping to have success with. Her name is Sister Abraham and shes the stake presidents wife. She is one of those people that probably stresses a little more than she should because she is always going going going helping others. So we went to visit them and we were going to give them the usual commitment to help "prepare a soul" as we say. We just give her a pamphlet and put our information on it and tell her to give it to one of her friends and then commit to work with us after introducing and preparing them. But as we sat talking to her, we both got the impression that wasn't what we were supposed to do. She left the room at one point to go take care of something and I turned to my companion and said, "I think we need to serve her." She smiled and told me that's what she was feeling too.
We shared with her a service scripture and then told her that we wanted to serve her and she couldn't say no. So she finally said that she wanted to learn how to cook an American dish. So she told us that she would pay for the ingredients if we would come cook dinner on Friday night. So we accepted.
So we showed her how to make mashed potatoes and gravy. She had only ever had it at KFC here so she was excited to learn. I showed her how to do everything and she just loved them. She said that she didn't want to put the gravy on the potatoes because they tasted super good by themselves. (That's because these people don't really know what butter is.) The kids were freaked out by it though because there was no rice. She ended up having to make it for them anyways. More potatoes for me! :)
We left her with a gratitude journal and told her to write in it every day. We told her that if she would be more grateful and see the little things in every day, she would be less stressed. We are taking it kinda slow with this relationship, but we hope to be able to have some success with investigators someday down the road because of her.
I know this church is true. I can see it every day as I watch people recognize the Spirit for the first time. I see it in the faithfulness of my companion. And thankfully, I'm seeing it in the gift of tongues as I am finally starting to catch on more. I am understanding more and more every day as I open my mouth. My mission president told me that it takes 30,000 mistakes before we are fluent in a language. We can decide how fast we want to make those mistakes.
Thank you! Love you all!
~Sister Lefebvre