Well, it’s that time again! Transfer time. And this time, I am pretty sure I am going. I have loved Liberty and the jail, but I am kind of ready for a new adventure. So I could end up staying, I could go to Independence, or anywhere! Next week I could be writing you from Hayes, Kansas. We shall see. I find out tomorrow and then transfers are Thursday.
We had some good experiences this week! And as usual, learned a lot of lessons. Our appointment situation was a lot better than last week with not every single person cancelling on us, which was a relief. We had a great experience this week with our investigator Denise. We haven’t been able to get her to church or really anywhere since we have been teaching her, but on Thursday she came with us to Independence! We took her to the employment resource center we have there because she is looking for a job and didn’t really know where to start. It went really well! They gave her a lot of options and places to look. Then of course we took her over to the Visitors’ Center. BB and Betty came as well (they are perfect fellowship for her!) and Denise brought her 22 year old son and her two littlest daughters. She loved it! We talked about families and the plan of salvation and then showed her the Christus statue and sang for her next to it. The acoustics are really awesome when you sing there-it just echoes to the whole building. She told us we sounded like angels, and that we sounded like what you would expect to hear welcoming you at the gates of heaven. It was awesome.
I was also able to learn a lot about the Spirit this week and how it speaks to me. We had an appointment with a woman this week, and last week when we made the appointment my companion didn’t really feel good about it. She mentioned it a couple times, and before we were going to go over she said she just didn’t want to go over. We both just kind of figured we needed to go because we had an appointment, and we couldn’t call her because she has no phone. So we went. It was very interesting. I just had a bad feeling the whole time we were there. Not a scary feeling or I felt like I would be hurt or anything, but just a feeling that I did NOT want to be there. I had a huge pit in the bottom of my stomach. I could tell my companion felt the same way, so we talked fast and got out of there. Then even though we only had less than half an hour until we needed to me at the jail for shift, we were able to have a really short but good lesson with one of our investigators who really needed to hear what we told him. So it just lifted us right back up, and we were very thankful Heavenly Father gave us that experience.
Another time this week we had one of our appointments cancel so we were deciding who to go see. We had a ward member team up with us that spoke Spanish, so we wanted to take advantage of that. We prayed about it and I didn’t have any strong thoughts about what we should do, but one Spanish investigator popped into my head. I didn’t think much of it and kind of disregarded it because this particular investigator has been blowing us off and not coming to appointments and things, so we almost gave up on him. We went to try a couple of other people with our members, and of course no one was home. We finally decided to go to the investigator I had thought of (my companion had thought of him too) and what do you know, he was home! We were able to have a really good lesson with him about the plan of salvation and what happens when you die, which has been on his mind a lot lately. I really learned from that experience that the Spirit doesn’t yell at you, it very softly gives you ideas. For me at least. And if you let your own ideas, thoughts, and judgements get in the way, you miss out! We could have had a longer lesson with him if we had listened, and addressed more concerns he had. But I also learned that Heavenly Father, when we are trying to obey and serve Him, just makes it possible for things to happen, even if you mess up a little bit.
Another miracle this week- we got one of our investigators to church! We have just been struggling with this for the last month. We have so many investigators that are SOOO close, and we just know if they come to church it would help them immensely. So last week we really worked on this one investigator, John, and made him really commit to come. We made him pinkie promise (yes, you read that right) that if we made him breakfast and came over in the morning he would come. And he did! AND he brought his wife. AND they stayed all 3 hours. It was awesome.
Well I am going to end with another cute story, actually from the same little girl that said “Next time can you bring Jesus with you?” This is John’s granddaughter, the man I was just talking about. So we went and saw him on Friday and brought a movie, but this little girl Ruby was kind of running around and being loud. So Sister Jacobs decides to take her over on the stairs and distract her. She gets out her plan of salvation cut outs (little visuals for the plan) and lets Ruby play with them. At one point Sis. Jacobs isn’t really paying attention to Ruby but then starts listening to her talking to herself. She looks down and sees that Ruby has the celestial kingdom cut out there, and she puts the pictures of God and Jesus by it. Then she takes the picture of Jesus and scoops up the little people cutouts, which of course she has named herself and her own family members, and picks up each one and puts them on the celestial kingdom as well. She says “Jesus flies over and picks us up, and takes us to live with God and Jesus. And we all live together with them!” or something similar to that. It was adorable! When Sis. Jacobs told me that I almost started crying. This is a 4-year old girl who has never even seen this taught, and even if she had she wouldn’t have been paying attention. Little kids just know! It is incredible.
Ok, well I love you all! I may or may not be a little bit jealous of my mother, who is currently in Hawaii, soaking up the sun. I hope you all have an amazing week!
-Sister Hafen
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