Tucson--#6

Hey Everyone!!

Kapua got baptized on Saturday and then she and Ahdryanna were both confirmed yesterday! The Spirit was so strong during both ordinances. Yesterday was the first time that I have stood in while someone received the Holy Ghost for themselves. I have done it in the temple before but it is a completely different experience when someone is receiving that saving ordinance for themselves. Our teaching pool of investigators is bone dry so I have been working really hard to get that filled up again. Elder Makenna went on two exchanges this week. I had to take over the area for both those days. Even though I have been in Tucson almost 5 weeks, I still do not have a complete handle on the area yet. One of my favorite and ironically other missionaries least favorite thing to do is tract. I decided that I was going to have an appointment with the Lord. If you do not know what that is, I said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father to guide me to his elect and then I prayerfully selected a couple streets from our area map. I had come up with three streets: Monte Vista Drive, Hayhurst St., and East Gate Drive. To make a long story short, I found 1 new investigator and 4 potential investigators. How we got the new investigator is actually a pretty funny story: We were tracting on Friday and knocked on a gentleman's door. He asked us, "Is there anything that I can help you with?" We responded with a typical door approach about the Plan of Salvation. He said that he was not interested but appreciated us knocking on his door. I offered him a mormon.org card and he thought about it for a little bit and opened the security door to accept the card. I explained what mormon.org was and how he could learn a lot about the church on the website. He said that he would go to the website. He then asked us, "Do you by chance happen to have a Book of Mormon on you?" We answered with a resounded, "YES!!!" and gave him a copy and explained what The Book of Mormon was. He said he would study it out over the next week and would like us to come back and talk to him about it more. During our conversation we discovered that he had been studying the origins about the Bible and how it was put together. He was not comfortable with the idea that people just picked and chose what books to include. He felt like there was more. He is completely ready to hear the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We would not have known this otherwise if I had not offered him a mormon.org card after he had rejected us. One of the potential investigators could possible turn into a family of new investigators. The first time we knocked on the door, a kid (maybe 10 years old) answered it and asked us to come the next day because his parents were asleep. We went the next day and the mom answered but she was really sick and told us to come back this week. She seemed really interested though, so I hope and pray that their hearts will be softened. I have been praying every night to find a family that is ready to hear the Gospel and I really think that they could be it. All I can do is put my faith in the Lord and have the Spirit teach and deliver the message "unto" their hearts and pray that they will use their agency for good. We visited a lot of Less-Active and Recent Converts (LARC's) this last week. It is amazing the excuses that people have for not coming to church even though they know that it is good. One Less-Active member is Sister Shelley. She says that she doesn't feel welcome and is offended one no one acknowledges her at church. Whenever she would come to church she would be late to Sac. meeting and leave Sac, meeting early so no one would have the chance to "acknowledge" her. She says that she still has faith though. I felt like this was an instance of being converted to the church (aka friends/members who occasionally move out of the area) and not being converted to the Gospel. We felt impressed to ask her if we could be bold with her. We have a very good relationship with her and she agreed to let us be bold. This next experience was probably the most I have felt the Spirit during a lesson and the Holy Ghost placed words in her mouth. We told her that there is a difference from "having" faith and "showing" your faith. We told her faith leads one to act. Faith will lead you to read your scriptures, go to church partake of the Sacrament and be more Christ-like. Faith is not something that sits idle, ready to be used at a moments notice. It needs to be nourished. We read the sacrament prayer for the bread and explained what it meant. We told her that if she wanted to feel that same Spirit she felt when she was baptized, she needed to come to church and partake of the sacrament. We could tell that this struck her and she really was thinking about what we said. She committed to read the BoM and come to church this Sunday! Missionary work is awesome! Great experiences will happen, all you have to do is "Put your shoulder to the wheel, [and] push along."

 

Love,

Elder Urry