Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Letter #52 (September 22, 2104)

Last week was SO good in a lot of ways. But it was also really hard. Which is probably why it was so good. Does that make sense? It's opposition in all things. The law of compensation. It's a love hate kind of thing, but I love it. It is so reassuring to know that when things go bad, something really good is coming up. 

So this week was hard for a couple of reasons. We have been in the process of dropping pretty much all of our investigators because the just won't progress. We've held onto them for too long in the hopes at heir hearts would change, but they're just not ready right now and we can't make them ready. So on Thursday we dropped the sweetest lady ever. She was so sad, which made it that much harder for us. 

Last night was also hard. We've been attempting to teach this little family for. While now, but they are living a a motel right now, trying to A. Get work and B. Move to a different city. But they've been at that motel for four months now and don't seem to be getting anywhere. Well yesterday we went by to see if they were still there. They are. And the youngest son got hit by a car and had to go to doctors appointments that they can't afford a few times a week. It's so sad because thing keep getting from bad to worse. And I just know that the gospel would change their lives around, but it is difficult to work with them in their current state. So we don't really know what to do.

But. This week really was very good in other ways. For example, I think I wrote about it raining last Tuesday. Well, we have since found out that it only rained where we were. No one else felt it except for a few people that live near the church. It seriously rained just for us! I'm not even kidding a little bit. It was SO hot that day and so Heavenly Father blessed us for going out and working hard anyway. Crazy.

And then Saturday was really good because pretty much every person that we stopped by was home. Like, if we had gotten there five minutes before or after we did we would have missed them. It was perfect. But get this. So we've had a referral for a Dennis O'Connell for a few months now, we've stopped by multiple times, no answer. We called the phone number, it was disconnected. So we stopped by one last time last week. No answer. So we left a pass along card in his door and called it good. We figured he probably moved and no one lives there. Until he called us on Saturday. "Hi, this is Dennis O'Connell. A Sister Kretchman and Sister Fjeldsted left a card on my door with this number on it." *Me freaking out inside* "Oh, we're missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Some othersisters talked to you a while back and gave us your information. Is there a time that we can meet and teach you more about Jesus Christ?" "Absolutely!" *Me absolutely shocked and freaking out more than ever* "Great! When can we...." Etc. Holy Cow people! NO ONE calls us from pass along cards. Ever. What the heck?! So we're really excited about that. HUGE blessing.

And then yesterday had two big events. One is the primary program. I LOVE the primary program. It's one if my favorite Sunday's ever. This one included a talk about how "my little sister Maddi is such a pest," a nice, loud, singer that then yelled "ca you hear me mom?" into the mic, and finished with the poor primary president (who is also the chorister) ending the final song with a big sweep of her arm with a squirmy child that she picked up just a moment before in the other arm. Despite all of that, it was still very good. It was really cool too because even some of the 3 and 4 year olds had memorized their parts.

Something really great about the primary program is how some, the testimonies are. We were able to arrange for this really sweet less active member with Parkinson's to come to listen to the primary program (her sight isn't too good). She seems to be kind of doze through a lot of it, but then the last song was "I'm I Child of God" and she perked right up and just started smiling! It was so sweet. She doesn't understand a lot of things, but she can still talk to us a little bit and she still remembers some things about church. "I Am a Child of God" is such a classic that she was able to recognize it. And we had sung it to her one day when we went to visit her and her daughter, Susan, who we have been working with. It was so sweet. She thanked us so much for inviting her and finding her and her nurse assistant a ride.

The other fun part about yesterday is that we finally did the youth fireside that I have wanted to do ever since I came out! When I was in Young Women, we had a fireside where Brillante (a newly returned missionary) spoke to us, and then they made us go out tracting around the church building. It was nerve racking and all of us were kind of annoyed about it, but it ended up being a really cool experience and something at I have always.  So we did that here. But instead of using church classrooms as people's "houses" we used actual houses. There is a little section of our area where six active members live really close to one another. So we started out with just talking about why we decided to serve missions, things we wish we had done to prepare, etc. and then we sent them out tracting to actual houses. I thought that a couple of the Young Men would either faint, or murder us. And only one Young Women came, so the bishop's wife was her companion. Once they realized that the houses were members' houses and not actually people's houses, they calmed down a teensy bit. So we sent them out with a little hand drawn map, gave them a name tag (a white label with the church's name written on it and Elder/Sister ______), a couple of Restoration pamphlets, and a couple of pass along cards. It was SO funny. Many of the youth belonged to the families who's houses we were using, so many people were rejected by their own parents or grandparents. It was so great. I think that it was a good experience for them though. One of the Young Men told me "yeah, I hated you at first, but then it was okay. So I don't hate you now." Haha, it was great. The youth will definitely never forget us! They might not remember us too fondly, but that's okay, the adults in this Ward all absolutely love it. And I think that the members who participated had a good time.

Anyway, two more things and then I'll wrap up I promise. 

1- We went to the zoo today! It was so fun! 

2- I looked up the Ensign that came out in February 1994 (the month and year that I was born) and I found an article that is kind of mind-blowing/slightly eerie. So I was scrolling the oh the titles of the articles and I found one with the word "missionary" in it, so I clicked on it. Well. Not only did it talk about missionaries, but he missionary was from California, and his sister's name was Analisa. Are you freaked out? I am. It was so cool at that article was published 20.5 years ago and was written just for me. The content was anything that I needed to read right at this moment or anything, but there is no way that that was a coincidence. That article came out right around the time I was born. And Analisa is NOT a very common name. Different spelling, but still. Weird. It's amazing how God really does know each of us individually. 

Anyway, I'm done now. I love you all!

~Sister Kretchman

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