Dear Mom,
Things are going well here in St.
Marys. We had a record breaking day of 67 yesterday, and we were missing
some of our regulars, so that was really good! We are really feeling good
about how the work is going out here. We had Zone Conference this last
week, and President Vellinga has put a huge emphasis on Family History work and
Church Attendance. We are supposed to invite everyone to church,
and we were able to see some of the results of that yesterday. For
example, Isaac came, but rather than calling to tell him we got him a ride, we
went over and invited him and the rest of his family, so he brought his
daughter, son-in-law and son with him. We also invited Cierra, who is a
fairly recent convert, but stopped going to church soon after her elders
left. She came and brought her baby boy with her, and she really seemed
to enjoy it.
We had a neat contacting experience
yesterday involving Family History. A member of the branch, Brother
B, is confined to a wheelchair after a really bad stroke he had a few
years back. He is a smart guy, and is frustrated with his slow speech and
lack of mobility. Anyway, because he can't get around well, when people
knock on the door all he can do is say, "come in." He gets a wide
variety of individuals in his home because of it, and it drives his wife
nuts! Anyway, they had a boy come to the door, and he swears he looked
just like an elder with a tag on. He was trying to sell him something,
and they ended up talking about Christ instead. The boy, Samuel, told
them his story of having gone to 3 years of catholic high school, and then went
on for another 7 years to become a priest. At the very end, after he
finished, he decided that it wasn't what God wanted him to be doing.
Sister B had walked in at the end, and happened to have served a mission
herself when she was younger. She really felt like he should be a member
of the church, and testified of the importance of families centered on
Christ. He left a business card with her with no other information than
his name, and the office phone number he worked for. So after the B’s
told us this story, they passed the card on to us. There wasn't much we
could do with it, so Sister Jenson offered to look him on Google. Isn't
that so creepy? What is creepier is that it worked! So we went over
and "tracted" into the address she gave us and met his dad. He
is one of the most humble men I have ever met in all my life. He is very
strong Catholic, and doesn't seem to believe the Catholic doctrine fully, though
he didn't say that out right. We talked about how the adversary is
attacking this world at the family level, and he really believed that. We
talked more about what we were doing out here, and asked if we could come back
and share the Family Proclamation with him and the rest of his family (they
have 11 kids). He agreed, and seemed interested to know what the
proclamation would say that would tie into what he believed and knew to be
true. So cool!
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| S Bakker, E Baker, E Barker |
Another cool story from this
week. So I don't know if I ever told you about getting my shoe repaired
up in Wapak, but we got to talking to the shop owner, and he was really
impressed with us, and said we could come over. Well we had our first
lesson with him and his family (Dale & Julie and their boys Jacob-20,
Austin-16, Nick-14) on Tuesday. It was great to testify boldly about the
further truth we can add to their already strong faith in Christ. Their
son Austin was the most interested in hearing all the things that we knew, and
how it differed from what he believed. We are going back tomorrow
night.
There have been a couple of other
really neat things that have happened this week, and great lessons we have
experienced. All in all, St. Marys is growing like a weed that can't slow
down! There is so much work for Sister O'Banion and I to do here. I
know that this truly is the time for the hastening of the Lord's work. I
know that we can either choose to be apart of it or not, but it will go forward
regardless. It is exciting to be a missionary at this time.
I love you all, and am so grateful
for your support and examples.
Love,
Sister Bakker
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