This past week was great!!
First of all we had an awesome lesson with the Aragons! We were able to teach them the plan of salvation :). We thought it went pretty well :) We have decided though, that we need to ask more questions. There has been something missing from the lesson and we think the spirit is there, but he's just not having the opportunity to teach because we just plow through the lessons and we don't ask enough questions so that the spirit can jump in and start teaching. Also at the same time though, Dominic is hard to read. We can't tell if he's actually interested or if he's just doing it for his wife. They came to church last Sunday and stayed for all three hours! Saundra loved all of it and so did her kids! We thought Dominic was also enjoying it because during Elders quorum he just plowed through the lesson in the book (Teachings of the Prophet: Joseph Fielding Smith). At the end though, I asked how he liked it and he said "ummmmm... it was interesting, we'll leave it at that." with a little laugh. So we really just aren't sure what he is thinking. We'll continue to work with him and see if we can find out what his concerns are. We're going with Brother Watson tomorrow to teach him "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" lesson and give him a baptismal date. Through that hopefully we can figure some things out.
Then the other highlight of the week was actually on Saturday. We decided to do some service tracting! For those of you who might not know what that is, it's when you go tracting for service and try and share a message before, while, or after the service. So we had been service tracting for about two hours and we were having no luck what so ever in finding people to serve. So finally we were about to give up and try someplace else when we realized we skipped a house! At first we were like should we do it or not? So we said, "Why not? What's one more door going to hurt?" So we knocked on the door and a women named Monica opened the door we told her what church we were from and that we were going around and offering service for anything she needed help with. At first she thought that we were just meaning minor things because she was like "Well I have something but I won't make you do that." So we asked her why not? We were going around looking for anything we could do to help no matter what it was. She began to tear up and asked us if we were really willing to help and all of us at once said yes. She began to cry a bit and told us that we were an answer to her prayers.
I guess a few months before, her husband was in a car accident and was injured very badly. In fact he had just had surgery for the fifth time to get some metal plates removed from his leg. So because her husband couldn't walk and she was working all the time, none of the house work was getting done and so it was just piling up. So we raked her yard of leaves, which was A TON. We had a large tarp that was meant to put over the top of the house, but we used it to gather leaves. We filled that up like 5 times and dumped it in the woods behind her house. It was like a great workout because it wasn't normal leaves. These had been sitting there for a while and had created layers of leaves. The top was dry, but the bottom was VERY wet, so the tarp was pretty heavy. Then after that we helped pull out what's called a butterfly bush. I guess for some reason butterflies are attracted to it so it always covered with them during the summer. However they didn't want it anymore, but couldn't pull it out. So we did :) Man, I tell you what, that root went way down into the ground and it was the size of a grapefruit. Lucky for us though, the ground was very soft so while it put up a good battle, in the end we won the war! Haha.
After the service was done, we asked if we could return to help with more service and then maybe share a message with her and her husband about Christ. She, as normal, was hesitant to have us over to talk about religion, but she eventually agreed to the service and message. Her little, I guess you could say argument, was, "I'm sure your message of Jesus and my message of Jesus are the same, but I'm down to talk about Him when ever!". We are hoping that next Saturday we can go over and help her some more and also teach her the about the restoration. It was an awesome experience to be an instrument in the Lords hands to help someone he has prepared for us :)
Ha! So that was pretty much our week!! Monday and Tuesday we were "snowed" in. It was a pretty good storm we had out here. They shut down the mission from Monday and Tuesday and then we were good to go out on Wednesday. It drives me nuts sometimes to have to sit there all day. So that's why we walked to the church.
Well I hope you're all having a good week and that you're seeing Heavenly Fathers hand in your own lives!!
Love,
Elder Gold
