Hello everyone! This week has been amazing!! lots of miracles are happening here.
On Tuesday while we were knocking doors from 5-7, there were some kids playing in one of the streets we were on. We noticed they started following us from door to door, but always staying on their scooters at the bottom of the driveways. We started talking to them, and they were so excited. We told them we are missionaries, and we go around talking to people about Jesus and helping people be happy because Jesus makes us happy. They told us they love Jesus, and they want to be missionaries, too! We gave them each a pamphlet to give to their friends, and then they went door to door with us for an hour. A whole hour! I was sure they were going to get bored and leave, but they didn't. We even had a short lesson on a doorstep, and they thought that was about the coolest thing they had ever seen. They were sad when we had to leave, so we took a picture with them, and promised to bring them each a copy of it next week. Also, we accidentally kind of lined up with our "mini-me"s in this picture, which is cute.
Every week our mission sets a mission-wide goal that we work on for that week. Usually it is a certain number of lessons taught, number of people on date for baptism, or something like that, where every companionship does everything they can to contribute to the total number. This week was a little different. The goal for this week was called "2-2-2-10", meaning everyone works to have 2 new investigators, 2 people at church, 2 people on date for baptism, and 10 lessons with a member present. Our trio worked really hard all week to make 2-2-2-10 happen for our companionship, and Sunday morning everything was all set to go. We already had more than 2 news, more than 10 lessons with a member, and 2 people on date, and we had invited 5 or 6 people to church, and even set up rides for some of them. And then none of them showed up. Not a one. Even the ones with rides weren't home when their rides got there. We were really upset about, but decided we would just have to try again next week. After the meeting however, we found out that a grandma in her ward had brought her two non-member grand daughters to church, and a less active lady had come with her non-member husband. We had 3 at church and didn't even know it! Our spirits were lifted, until we realized that one of the 2 people we had on date was no longer eligible to be baptized next week because he didn't come to church this week, so now we had met our goal for at church, but were short of our on date goal (if this is getting confusing, I'm sorry). However, we were so inspired by the miracle of 3 people at church, that we decided to just go out, work as hard as we could, and put someone on date by the end of the day. It sounds pretty crazy, but we were so filled with faith, that we knew God would guide us. We prayed and asked where we needed to knock to find someone ready to commit to a baptismal date. As Sister Knudsen was praying, the name of an investigator from my first month in Tacoma came to my mind: Charmaine. Many of you may not remember Charmaine, but she was the title character of "Episode 14: The One with the Blue Weave". It seemed odd, because we hadn't been able to get in contact with Charmaine since that first week or so, but we followed the Spirit and went to knock her street. As we were walking up to her door, before we even knocked, the door opened, and a lady I hadn't seen before greeted us. It turns out that she is Charmaine's mom, and she has been going through some really hard stuff recently, and she started crying just telling us about it. We consoled her, taught her about the Atonement, and long story short, we put Charmaine, Charmaine's mom, And Charmaine's daughter on date! The Spirit was so strong, and I was full of joy and gratitude.
This experience taught me so many things, including but not limited to:
-God supports us as we work toward worthy goals
-if you follow the Spirit, you will always be right
-faith+hard work=miracles
-it is never to late for the Atonement
-gratitude is not a burden, it is a joy
Life is great here in the WA-TAC. I love you all and I pray for you every day.
Love,
Sister Lemon
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