9-24-12
I am SOOO excited for General Conference!!!
We have a countdown in our planners! WOOHOO!!!!! I am so excited to
hear what the Lord wants us to do at this time! We also listen to MoTab a
lot to get even more excited! Start preparing your questions- but chances
are they will get answered before hand in church or something because the
spirit is amazing and Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to live in confusion.
When does Isaac get home? And what mission is
he serving in Brasil and where did Andrew serve? I know a little more
about Brasil now, so I can imagine what it was like more.
White washes are hard. But I feel the
strength of the Lord and we feel like the work is finally moving a bit more
again. This has really made me appreciate the work the missionaries
before do in each area. The Lord and my companion are teaching me to be
patient and to love and be grateful for every minute. One night during
planning I was frustrated and felt like we hadn´t made any difference. My
comp. said hold up! and went through every hour of the day and talked about
each person we talked with, each card we handed out, each invitation we made,
and how we made people feel the love of the Lord. I am learning that if
we focus on the big things we miss the small, happy moments. Elder
Uchtdorf talked about that in his talk ´forget me not´. When we don’t
have baptisms every week I get anxious and down on myself because I know that
it is possible in every single area to have a baptism every week and I know
that Heavenly Father is sad when no one is baptized. But I also know that
He is happy when we do our best and when we plant seeds and help the members
and less actives and when we follow the spirit and when we try our best to be
100% obedient. But we can’t get lost in the big stuff. We need to
enjoy every small, happy moment.
We visited and got to know most of the members this
week and we feel their love. I have never been in a ward/branch where the
members love the missionaries so much. We had a sweet experience with a
member named Paulo. He is SO cool!!! He is a DJ and was baptized a
couple of years ago. We went to his house and he made a list of people we
can talk to, of people he thinks are interested. So we made plans for him
to talk to them and introduce us. And Nato, the first counselor reminded
him to pray about the list and I suggested we pray right then and there and we
felt the same people to focus on and it was so awesome because Paulo received
personal revelation and freaked out with excitement when others felt the same
thing and he was SO EXCITED!!!!! he called the people right then and we
marked some compromissos. It was such a good experience- I will do this
with all the members. Well, the ones who are willing and will make a list
of friends. So much of it is in the members hands. I am so
grateful to be serving with willing members- who have the missionary
fire! Paulo was incredulous when we told him this is what we do each week
in weekly planning- praying to know specifically the people we should focus on
for baptism and other things and I realized I have been taking this revelation
and experiences for granted. Missionary work is amazing and we receive so
much power and strength and direction from the Lord. This is His work.
A young girl in the ward, Isabela, said that she
wants us to teach her friend- her friend has already expressed she wants to be
baptized! As we planned with Isabela what we wanted to teach her she got so
excited and was filled with the spirit of missionary work- she wants to share
the gospel with more friends and she said she wants the branch full of young
people!!!
We talked to this women smoking out of her window
one night and promised her that if she would continue to listen to us and
search for herself the truth of our message her husband would find a job.
We saw her again the other night and she was so excited to tell us that her
husband found a job and she thought of us as soon as she found out.
We visited a menos ativo family- Familia
Moreno. they talked to us for a long time about how they were treated
badly by ward members in Faro and why they fell away. It broke my
heart. They should know better, but those members also did wrong. I
am not pointing fingers at anyone, but it broke my heart how the enemy uses
people in the church for bad. I almost cried when he told us that the
missionaries do amazing work but the members destroy everything we do. I
know that isn’t true all the time, but I have seen it many times in my mission
and it breaks my heart. The devil is so good at what he does. And
we all just need to be careful and strengthen our personal testimonies so he
doesn´t use us to bring down the church. We are not perfect, and we need
to understand that no one is, but Satan is real and we need to protect and
fight.
Yesterday we taught primary and principios do
evangelho. I love small branches. it reminds me of our experiences
as a family serving in the church with areas without lots of members. I
love my mission.
Elder Holland gave a talk in Priesthood session 2
conferences ago and he talked about what happened before the first
vision. Joseph said he felt his tongue was bound. And Elder Holland
said (talking about the devil) ´But apparently his effort to s top the
work will be reasonably well served if he can just bind the tongue of the
faithful.´ Powerful. We just need to open our mouths! And the enemy
wins when we don’t.
I love you all SOO much!!! With my whole
heart!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Jack!!!! I love you so much!!! You
deserve the best. Just look through my telescope I made you and think of
me saying Tender! Love you love you love you!!!!
Irmã Tingey
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