¡Buenas tardes!
We have now had 2 weeks in a row full of miracles, lots of delightful events, and God-given happiness! All of the blood, sweat, and tears of the past 3-4 months, and particularly the rejection and miles of walking the past 4 weeks, are worth the success and joy we have had right now. I had been praying to know how to love my mission more, and Heavenly Father blessed me immeasurably with new-found happiness, and then He led us to those who are ready for the gospel.
Numbers are definitely not everything, but I just have to say that God was really nice to us, and we were able to have 8 lessons in one day (normally it's a good day if we have 4) and 100 contacts for the week! Both were personal records:) The more people you talk to, the more opportunities to teach you have, and now we have 2 new investigators! On of them is named Yamilka, and oh my goodness, I have never met someone so incredibly prepared to hear the gospel!! Her urgency to learn about and prepare for the Second Coming of the Messiah is unlike that of anyone I know. She has so many marvelous questions, wants to know which church is true, wants to find service opportunities, loves modesty, knows that Sunday is the Sabbath day, quickly grasped how the Book of Mormon and Bible go hand in hand, wants to know about the Plan of Salvation, and straight-up asked what she needs to do to be baptized!!!! She doesn't even want to waste time taking the lessons because she just wants to jump right to bautismo if you can believe it haha but we explained that there is doctrine she needs to learn and things she needs to do to prepare first. The only problem is that she has a class on Sunday at 8 am, when our ward starts, but apparently it's ending soon, and she really wants to come to church! Yamilka accepted our invitation to be baptized, and she's so wonderful that I can hardly handle it:):):)
Other fantastic news: Elena, who we had a lesson with outside of the temple, accepted a baptism date for June 4th, and Rosa (her co-worker) accepted our baptism invite! She lives in the East mission but is here all day, and her son is meeting with the missionaries there, so we're trying to help her be taught back there. Adolfo, our strongest investigator (68 year old), had slipped up and drunk alcohol at the beginning of the transfer, so his date fell, but the new goal still stands for May 7th because he's been keeping the Word of Wisdom and coming to church! He'll have his interview within the week!
Friday, we had interviews with Presidente y Hermana Nuckols, and then I went with Hermana Villegas on splits in her area. Hna. Perez and I had 3 lessons with Alex, the awesome investigator we found last week, and he read the whole Restoration pamphlet and started the Book of Mormon!
Saturday was absolutely fabulous; we got up at 5:30 and spent the day with the Central Stake youth, teaching them how to be missionaries! It was SO much fun! Everyone received a name badge and mission call; Hna. Villegas and I were in charge of the London mission and had 5 Hermana companionships. In the afternoon, the 16+ year olds went on splits with us. Before we started, one of my girls said that she didn't want to serve a mission, and by the time we finished, she said that she now wants to serve:):)
This has hands down been one of my best weeks in the mission! I'm not just happy because of the success and miracles we've had--I'm happy because I'm filled with the joy and peace of Christ. My mission president gave me an incredible missionary story last week, and there's a part I'd like to share that expresses my feelings perfectly:
"I am so grateful to be a missionary. Do you know what it makes me feel like?
I feel like a really rich person who spends all day every day walking down the street trying to give each person she meets a $100 bill. The gospel would make all of these people so much happier than a $100 bill! And you know, the happiness never has to leave. Because it comes from sharing the gospel, the Spirit can be with us all our lives, as long as we keep sharing the gospel.
t’s funny, but I don’t even feel discouraged when I ask someone to learn about the Church, and they tell me they’re not interested. I know I just offered them something more valuable than a $100 bill, and if they don’t think they need it, I just offer it to someone else. And I always hope that the people who reject the invitation felt that I loved them, and felt God’s love for them, while I was talking with them. At some point in their lives, they might remember how they felt, and remember that it came from God through me."
I hope you all will feel of that bright hope and will find ways to share it with the world! Espero que cada uno de ustedes seran misioneros en sus propias maneras esta semana:)
Su Dominicana,
Hermana Randall