Living For The Eternities Not The Moment

Living For The Eternities Not The Moment

Shout OUTs!

Nathan Summers, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your letter this week haha! Printing out my blog and writing your comments on the things I wrote kept Sister Rogers and I entertained for a good long while and your Haiku was great! 

Thank you Sister Bennett for the pictures you sent of Jill's shower! I felt like I was there and it means a lot that you are so diligent in including me in all the festivities! 

AMBER YOU GOT MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!! BAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! I got your wedding invitation about a week ago and I pretty much screamed in front of the whole zone haha! I wish I could have been there, but I am SO happy for you 2 :D PLEASE send some pictures when you have time and give let me know how everything was! 

AH! Amber Pedlar!!!! :D

Alright so this week was nothing less of spiritually draining.... IT WAS AWESOME! 

I will start out with our new investigator named Sam. She is a referral from the Choi's in our ward and we had the opportunity this week to teach Sam at the Choi's house. Sam has had a pretty rough life but it is incredible the person she has become. Sister Rogers always says, "Trials can make you bitter or better," and Sam has definitely become better. We sat down with Sam and we started to do a "how to begin teaching" with her, which is essentially getting to know her and we were blown away by her story. Sister Rogers started to tear up and bore her testimony of the love that Heavenly Father has for her and how proud He is of her and the spirit just hit us like a ton of bricks and Sam even started to tear up! We proceeded to teach her about the restoration of Christ's church and holy crow, I dont think I've ever taught someone so prepared! It all made sense to her! After we recited the first vision we asked her how she felt and she paused and said that she has never felt anything like this before. She felt something different when we came into the house and it was similar to this feeling, but it was magnified 10 fold. She described it as someone pouring warm liquid down her throat and having it fill her whole body. We helped her to identify that feeling as the Holy Ghost and told her that was God's way of telling her that what we are telling her is true. She started to tear up a bit again, the spirit was just so strong. At the end of the lesson we invited her to be baptized and she accepted. She also agreed to work towards August 11th as a baptismal date. Unfortunately she wasn't able to come to church this week cause the ride we had gotten for her cancelled last minuet so we will have to push her date back, but that doesn't really matter :) 

We taught Sammy again... and it became clear to us that he just is not ready for baptism. I am at a loss right now as to what we can do to help him... its frustrating, but I know that that is my natural man coming out and I should have much more patients.... I am working on it haha. Sammy always calls us his children, but sometimes I think of it as the other way around and he is actually preparing me for motherhood haha! We have set him with another date for August 25th and will be trying to figure out what we need to change to help him feel the message of the restoration is truth.

Now for Mario :) Sister Ogden and I talked with Mario outside his house about.... 4 weeks ago and he agreed to let us come over and talk with him about life after death. Mario is just about the nicest, selfless guy I know. Him and I have an easy relationship and joke around more than I do with any other investigator I've had, but I never really felt like he was invested in the discussions... or had that desire to change his life. So this week we took Sister Taylor with us to teach Mario the restoration and I guess you could say the purpose of this lesson was a DTR (determine the relationship... haha I'm having flash backs to when Jill and Tyson were dating bahaha). At the start of the lesson I invited him to say the closing prayer and he said next time he would (he has been saying that for the past few lessons -_-) I wasnt going to have any of that so I challenged him to a rock paper scissors battle and if I won he would have to say the prayer. He readily agreed and we began our battle!  

Round 1:
Mario - paper 

Sister Hall- Scissors!

Round 2:

Mario- Scissors

Sister Hall- paper.......

Round 3:

Mario- rock

Sister Hall-............PAPER!!!

AH HA! Who's on the Lords side Who!!! HAza for Israel! 

Anyways I won and we began our lesson. We talked with him about prophets and really got Mario involved in the discussion! We asked him how important he thought prophets were on a scale of 1-10 and he said an 8 and I just looked at him... then he changed his answer to a 10, apparently because of the face I gave him (haha), but then we asked him why he thought it was an 8. He told us and gave the analogy of the telephone game and how messages can get skewed, and we helped him to understand why exactly prophets were important using that analogy! That prophets kept the purity of the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! A few minuets latter something miraculous happened 

Me: "Mario, why was it SO important then for God to call another prophet?!"

Mario: "Well because prophets are the ones with the authority to baptize and without a prophet people couldn't be baptized.. and you need to be baptized to return to live with God..."

I just about passed out but instead may or may not have given Mario a high five across the table...

------>----> fast forward to the end of the lesson ------->------>

We laid it all out on the table. God has called another prophet in these latter days. We asked him what he thought of this, and he said that it would be nice, but how do you know... The member we brought, Sister Taylor, looked at Mario and told him that God loves us just the same as he loves his children in the Bible. So much so that he has again called a prophet... I dont remember what else she said, but I looked over at Mario and he was wiping away tears. I looked at Mario and invited him to follow the example of his Savior and to be baptized and he said yes. He is now working towards a baptismal date of August 18th :) This is what he said to us after we agreed on a date:
"You guys are just so happy. Every time I see you, you have a smile on your face. I want that in my life." 
I have never experienced joy like this before. Seeing people come unto Christ and make changes in their life to find greater happiness and joy.... there is nothing else like it. True happiness really does come from serving our fellow men and following Christ. It reminds me a lot of something Ben said a little while ago in one of his letters about how we have artificially created happiness, but true happiness lies in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We told him there were going to be somethings in his life that he would have to change and do to get his answer and to find that happiness and he acknowledged that. One of the things that we said he would need to do is come to church so we invited him to come and without hesitation he said he would. When Sunday rolled around Sister Rogers and I stood in the parking lot and watched as Mario and his son Scotty drove into the parking lot. We walked them inside and had a great sacrament meeting.

I love you all :) Go out and be happy! 

Line of the Week: So sister Rogers and I are working on our door approach so that we can actually get inside to teach people... Apparently we got pretty good at it cause when two 15 year old girls answered the door and said we could come in and share a message, this is how sister Rogers reacted..

Sister Rogers as soon as she sits down, talking faster than the speed of light and giving NO time for anyone to respond to her questions: "So you dance? Thats awesome I dance too! So do you think God can call a prophet today? Well He has! What can a prophet do for you?" 

The two girls awkwardly sitting next to us on the couch: "............."

Me -> face in palm 

Scripture of the week: 3 Nephi 27: 20

"Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day."

A Haiku for You:

The Lords Time 

Patients Charity

Treasures Found 

Sister Hall