Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Subject: Transfer 12, Week 2: Trenton Texas, the tulips around us, you never know, Temple cleaning and the Buyer
Wow.
The week I have just had might be
one of the best/most memorable weeks on my mission. I'm so grateful I just kept
holding/hanging on, even just to be able to have this week!
Texas
In between teaching calling appointments, I received an
inbound call from a lovely lady asking for a Book of Mormon! Turns out she
lives in T, TEXAS! She's in her 60s and has a Baptist upbringing but said
that the reason why we Mormons have so many people call in must surely be because
"of who we are. People can just tell."
If you don't know where T, Texas is, it's really really
close to ...where my grandparents are
from. We talked about the Book of Mormon, and she told me the reason why she
doesn't still have a copy is because she gave it to her son before she moved!!!
Pretty neat.
My amazing comp gave this analogy that I love. She said:
"If we go through our missions, only looking for tulips (or baptisms),
we'll miss out on all the other flowers all around us. When we aren't grateful
for all the other flowers God has given us, it's like our own Father giving us
this beautiful bouquet of flowers and us turning to Him and saying- I don't
want it. There's no tulips in it. Besides, how boring would an all-tulip
bouquet be? God gives us all sorts of miracles around us, we just have to be
grateful and recognize all of the flowers in our bouquet- or our mission or our
life."
This really impacted a lot of sister missionaries, because one of the biggest points about miracles is that we must recognize them as such, and be grateful for the miracles that we do have, no matter how small or how much to us they may resemble "daises", because otherwise we won't receive more.
Then the sisters shared with us so many miracles throughout the
week that they were so grateful for, that they wouldn't have recognized before
then.
That's my challenge to y'all----- recognize the little things
all along the path because you will be happier and the journey won't
seem so long before you find your next "tulip". I was sad for too much of my
mission because all I'd ever recognize as a miracle was a "tulip", ( a baptism)....
Or something else really big. But that's not the case. Heavenly Father gives us
all sorts of miracles every single day!
Right before I was about to take an investigator lesson with the Elders from another mission, we received a phone call. Luckily I answered it. It was another sister in our mission who asked us- "Do you know S?" (dear family and friends--- the person Sister O and I taught and loved so much from January-April on my mission who we had to drop teaching because he was so against the Church suddenly/became really anti.) Of course I said, "yes". Then I asked her the exact same question.
Turns out a blessed recently returned missionary who goes to
school with him in SLC referred his phone number (EVEN
though he said he wasn't interested to talk with missionaries again) to these
sisters at General Conference and they called him. Somehow in their conversation they
got him to agree to come to the Square again and be taught. MIRACLE. Wow.
I couldn't believe my ears when they told me that. Wow. So this Saturday he
came to the Square to be taught and shared with them all of his questions and
concerns. The sister who called him has been on her mission almost exactly
since April and she is a convert to the Church and really can relate to him and
help him recognize answers to his prayers because she had a long road towards
converting. WOW. Please pray for him!!!
Temple cleaning
On Monday a few of us "older" missionaries got to go
and clean the Temple. The last time we did it, I still had a wonderful experience cleaning
the front lobby, but this time the experience was even more special. We got to
go up to the Solemn Assembly Room and clean off all of the chairs for a
meeting. The spirit in that room was amazing. You just walked in, and wow. We
sang very quietly the hymn, The Spirit of God. It was a really neat time.
The Buyer
The last story of the week comes from my planner. Before the
transfer started, I prayed to know what I should put on my planner so that I
could use it for the up coming transfer to help those who I've found. The
lesson we had that particular day was with a less active member who really just
did not know that God valued him. He felt that God loved everyone else, but
that somehow just didn't apply to someone like him who had done so much wrong.
That was basically what we corrected him on the entirety of the lesson. Every single lesson in Preach My
Gospel that we share with people always starts with this absolutely important
fact: God is our loving Heavenly Father.
If we don't believe that,
then prophets don't matter, Ten Commandments- who cares, God's plan - what is the point?
Instead, we should believe that God knows us and loves us. As I came to this conclusion
and was saddened by the man's situation, I looked down at my planner and these are
the words that I saw that I had cut out from the Ensign and taped there:
What am I worth?The buyer decides if an item
is worth the price.
(There's a picture of Christ in
the background paying the price for each one of us, buying us, in Gethsemane.)
It's already been paid, we've already been bought. We are already determined
worth the price.
The back of the planner is a
picture of the universe with this quote "Compared to God, man is nothing;
yet we are everything to God."
I know that this is true.There's really nothing left to say today.
Thank you for your prayers,
Love,
Sister Fisher
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