Monday, May 23, 2016

Week 40

It was a week of MIRACLES!  I absolutely love serving a mission. I love it. With all of my heart. I love being here, and I love serving God.

So many miracles happened this week, but I'll try to summarize them. First off, last Thursday was my Hump Day! I hit my 9 month mark. I am halfway through my mission!  We weekly planned, and then went out and worked as hard as we could! The most significant thing that happened that day was that we helped a woman we were teaching to receive a priesthood blessing for some health challenges she's been facing. She felt the spirit and the blessing told her some things she needs to do to be healthy, so we are going to help her with those things.
 Here are pictures of me that day! We went to Chili's for dinner, and then ate hot pudding and pumpkin cookies when we got in that night. Also, Sister Hunt did my hair so it was curly again. :D

We are teaching S, who we met while we were street contacting on Wednesday. He really enjoyed having a discussion and comparing beliefs, and asking us lots of questions about things like what we believe about the rapture, the tribulation, etc. We gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to read it. We stopped by his house on Saturday, and this time, he was a lot more receptive and willing to listen. We were able to teach him the Restoration, read some scriptures from the Book of Mormon, and invite him again to read and pray about it. It was pretty unlike any other restoration I've ever taught though. He had a pretty high understanding of Christianity and the gospel, so we were able to explain more in detail about dispensations, apostasy, the Priesthood, and how Joseph Smith was called to be a prophet. He said he is more interested in reading the Book of Mormon now, and he would definitely pray about it. It was so awesome!! We were able to help him overcome misconceptions and build a solid understanding of the restoration.

We also met some more men, A, L, and C, who all said that we could come back and teach them and their families, so hopefully that will develop into progressing families. L seems really solid; he and his family just moved here recently, and he seemed really receptive to the restoration. A is reading the Book of Mormon right now, and said he would like for us to come and teach his family. And C is of the Hindu religion! That was a super cool experience because we got to explain the basis of Christianity. It was a new lesson to me because I had to teach someone who the Holy Ghost was. That doesn't happen very often in Florida. We also got to teach him about baptism. I'm not sure how much he understood, but he accepted a return appointment! When we go back this week, we are going to focus on the similarities of our religions and then help him progress further than that, very slowly. I'm excited to help these families learn about the gospel!

Alrighty, now for the week. We found in some new areas this week, places that are further south in our area, and we found some really cool and receptive neighborhoods! We taught some really interesting people, but the best ones I explained above. On Friday we taught a less active family, and they said they would like to go to the Gladys Knight performance, which happened on Saturday. They then came to church the next day! That was really cool.

The Gladys Knight performance was awesome. It was unlike anything I've ever seen happen in a chapel before. There was clapping and cheering and "hallelujah"s and "amen"s, and I loved it. You could feel the spirit so strongly, and I know its because this choir and the audience was praising Jesus with all their hearts. The choir sang some pretty multi-cultural songs, and they were so beautiful. There was one that sang a Hawaiian song, another that did a Latino/Hispanic song (not sure which. it was that general style of music, though.) There also was a lot of baptist-style music, and I loved it! The spirit was there, and I knew that the people there could feel it too.
We had lots of other adventures this past week:
We discovered a jungle in the middle of our area!

It was SUPER cloudy one day, but we didn't get rained on once, which was a miracle.


Us in a field close to our apartment complex!
It was such a good week! Hope you all have a great week, too! :)

With love,
Sister Minson

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