Dearest family and friends,

 

It's been another great week in the OPM!! :) Lately I've been a little bit lax with my sacred grove morning prayer (in our mission we arise at 6:15am rather than 6:30am to have a sacred grove experience; we pour our souls out to God and plead for Divine help). On Tuesday I decided to rededicate myself to the prayer and I made it much more meaningful. I want to testify that it made ALL the difference!! I tangibly felt His help as we went about our missionary work. I was more bold than I ever have been before and the discouraging moments didn't seem as bad. We went tracting that day and I felt prompted to go to a street I'd seen on the map but never been to before. We knocked on every door and only two people answered out of about fifteen. After we had finished the street, we had ample time left over so we went to the next street; we soon found out that that's the reason we were in that area! We set up return appointments with three houses in a row! S, B, and N. I'll report on them next week :) Follow-up on K: We knocked on her door and she didn't answer...we heard loud fans blowing and decided to call her cell phone. She answered and it was funny becuase we could hear her talking on it from upstairs! :) She explained that her upstairs toilet had flooded and people were on their way to fix it and replace her carpets. She said to come back in two weeks.

 

We were finally able to have a lesson with B on Wednesday! It was phenomenal! The spirit was very strong and he and the member present were able to relate so well to each other! Blair said he's the type of person that he's either all in or all out and he wants to be all in so that's why he wanted to meet with us and learn more :) We taught the Plan of Salvation; my favorite part was when I described physical and spiritual death because after I explained them, B said, "So, if I'm understanding correctly, what you're saying is we'll never be able to live with God again?" I said, "Exactly! You've highlighted our next point: The need for a Savior." It was beautiful how he put that together :) They said in the MTC that that would happen if you explained things correctly and it did! :) We invited him to pray about the things we taught him and he said he didn't know if he was quite there yet. But we have another lesson set up for this Wednesday and we're planning to talk about prayer and recognizing the spirit. We'll invite some other members to the lesson so he can make more new friends.

 

On Thursday we got a new investigator!! His name is C; we tracted into him on October 3rd. We knocked on the door and we heard the typical bark of a dog. C opened the door and quickly came outside and closed it so the dog wouldn't escape. We explained who we were and asked him if he'd ever heard of the church before. He said he had and that he'd gone to church a couple of times with a friend when he was younger. We asked him if religion was a part of his life now, he said no. We asked him if he'd like it to be and he said he'd been thinking a lot about it lately! He asked where our church was and we described its whereabouts. He said he wanted to come on Sunday! However, we remembered it was general conference so we had to briefly explain that to him :P Haha, he seemed confused and I'm sure he thought it was odd, but oh well. We asked him if there was another time we could meet and we decided on Thursday (the 10th) at 7:00pm. He said we should probably meet at the church because his grandma is a little bit anti. (Good thing C answered the door!) Anyway, as you have probably put together by now (because of the first sentence of this paragraph) he indeed came on Thursday! We had prepared with Sister L (ward missionary) so we sat in the foyer waiting for him to come, and he did :) We taught the Restoration and it was very powerful! Chris is 23 so we may have to give him to the YSA (young single adult) missionaries. That's okay though :) It's all God's work; a baptism is a baptism.

 

We had exchanges on Friday. I was with Sister Benson (my 'grandma') from Mapleton, Utah. I don't remember if I ever told you that she trained my trainer. Pretty exciting :) It was fun to spend the day with her. She has been out ten months and is a fabulous missionary! I learned so much from her and we were able to visit many people that she worked with when she was here but for whatever reason haven't been in contact with missionaries as of late.

 

Saturday was a busy day! We volunteered at the 27th annual Great Onion Festival in Sherwood. (Apparently the Northwest is known for being a great place to grow onions.) We helped cut up and weigh onions for the onion eating contest and then we served food for the rest of the day. We also received a free plate for ourselves :) A plate consisted of baked chicken, a baked onion, baked beans, coleslaw, and an onion roll (everything had onions in it!) It was fun to mingle with the other volunteers as well as people from the community. We talked a lot about what we do as missionaries with the girl serving food in between us. Her name is R and she's 19. She has friends on missions but isn't a member of the church herself. It was a great conversation! We also talked a lot with some non-member neighbors of a less-active/part-member family in our ward that we've met before. It was great to strengthen that relationship! What a fun day! And it got even better too! That night was our ward chili cook-off! One potential investigator attended.

 

On Sunday we were invited to primary for the last ten minutes. They had us do some role plays with the children on how they can invite their friends, family, and neighbors to the primary program next week. It was fun to get them excited about missionary work.

We also got another new investigator on Sunday! Her name is E. She's eighteen and is the girlfriend of a priest in our ward . Her mother is a member in Chicago but has been inactive the majority of her adult life and her dad is Catholic so she was baptized and raised in that faith. E has many friends that are LDS, including B, so they have sparked her interest in the church. She has met with missionaries before and has the desire to be baptized! She wants to make sure she's doing it for the right reasons and has a concern about the Plan of Salvation. She said if we're able to 'convince' her, she'll be baptized. We talked about faith by reading Mosiah 4:2-12. I love King Benjamin :) He instigated what might have been the first general conference ;)

We were also asked by a seminary teacher in the other ward to substitute his class on Tuesday (it's a calling here, not a profession). Haha, wish us luck! He said his class isn't very talkative...The lesson is based on 2 Nephi 3.

 

Well, I think that's just about all! :) To end, I have a good quote that I heard from the member who attended B's lesson with us. He said, "When we judge others, we're not respecting their agency." I had never thought about it like that before! I really like that view of judging others. May we all be accepting of others and not blame them for their choices. While we don't love the sin, we love the sinner. I'm glad to be out of 'Happy Valley' for a short time to see how much of a bubble it really is. There's hardly any diversity there so when someone different does show up, they're often ostracized. I'm grateful to have this experience and insight to guide my behavior in the future. I love you all and I'm grateful for you!! Until next week,

 

Love,

Sister King

 

P.S. "It's funny when even your hair appointment falls through." We were going to have our hair cut by a member this week, but it fell through so we've rescheduled it for this week. We laughed at the irony though :)