Week 83

By George!

Jan 21, 2014 at 12:55 PM

First off, I want to say this day will remain infamous throughout history for it is the only day in my entire life that the date of my birth is equal to the number of years since my birth :)  Good stuff.

Anyways,

Hello family and friends,

Glad to see y'all again ;) figuratively, of course :)  I also did receive said birthday box; thank you so much for the Tie (mighty gorgeous I might add), and Taco Bell gift card (you know me too well) and "off-the-charts" pumpkin chocolate chip bread.  Oh my goodness.  Soooo good. Sooo moist.  Mom and Dad...thanks so much :)  y'all are the best in the west . . . and the east . . .

I also received a letter from mom I think and at least 1 from grandma. 

Yes, mother, I am still emailing Chris little snippets and He me. :)  I haven't received the cord yet, but it might be in the mail box.  who knows.  the mailman, probably.

Let's see...what else.  We have zone conference tomorrow.  I will be conducting, which will be intense . . . and then Elder Bagley and I will be giving an instruction for about 20 minutes.  Should be really good.  We had an amazing experience in preparing it.  Here goes. . . so . . . we say a lot of prayers as missionaries; and as with anything in life, it's very easy to get into routine. . . in hindsight, I realize that this is what had occurred with me.  We said a prayer before we began discussing what we do for our instruction, and I'll tell you what, it was the most discombobulated, random, inconclusive, unorganized 20 minutes of "preparation" that I've ever experienced.  We, and a lot of I, just talked about faith and hope and random subjects going along with that for 20 minutes, and then at the end, we were no closer to knowing what in the world we were going to teach than we were before we prayed.  And then I realized that we were pretty much trying to do it on our own.  My heart wasn't in that prayer where we should have been pleading with, begging Heavenly Father to show us His will and direct us in His paths.  But instead, as I realized then, I had simply knelt down, said amen, and hopped up.  My attitude had not been one like Daniel had of "Speak Lord, and thy servant heareth".  It had been more like, "Look, God, Elder Bagley and I have this in the bag, but if you want to be back up or something and help us out if we get in a pinch, that would be awesome."  Needless to say, we got back on our knees and offered up a heartfelt prayer of acknowledging our unworthiness before Him, or dependency on Him, and our sincere desire for Him to be the truly leading this preparation.  Following that true prayer, revelation truly flowed, and Elder Bagley and I both feel very confident in the inspiration we have received in what to teach the Zone. 

Also, last week, we went on a blitz with a set of Elders in our Zone.  It is one of the Elder's first time training, so we went and by blitz, I mean, we had 2 sets of missionaries running around in their area.  It was great.  The 2 missionaries we went with are awesome missionaries, and we were definitely impressed by their diligence and enthusiasm for the work.  Both Elder Bagley and I can remember blitzes that we had with our zone leaders when we were young and how much impact they had in shaping us into the missionaries we became, so I hope that we had at least some semblance of a positive impact on these 2 fine missionaries. :)

We also had an amazing church tour with this fantastic individual we are teaching.  Her name is Vickie, and she is a media referral.  She is truly seeking and wants to find the truth, but she really wants to make sure that she makes the right decision for her family.  As would be expected, she is a little hesitant to come to church, and that's when Elder Bagley had the brilliant idea (or, I should say, the spirit inspired Elder Bagley with this brilliant idea) to have a church tour with her.  When we told her on the phone that we would love to have a church tour with her for our lesson on Thursday, she started crying because of how grateful she was for that, and she thought it would be a great idea.  Then, to make it better, we asked the Elders Quorum President and his wife, who is a convert from the same faith as our investigator and a counselor in the Relief Society, to join us and THEY COULD!!! So, now, this is a couple of days before the church tour and we are begging Heavenly Father to do anything and everything to make sure that this all goes through.  When things have that much coordination, the likelihood of it falling through is inordinately high.  We knew that there was going to be opposition, but we were praying that it wouldn't prevent it from occurring or that the opposition could come in a later arena.  Well, long story short, it all worked out, but only thanks to the member family whose faith and determination to overcome opposition was strong.  One of their daughters had gotten Pneumonia and the other was sick and they had been at the doctor's that morning, but when they thought of cancelling on us, they said there was no way they could do that, so they just brought everyone and stuck the kids in another room.  Amazing miracles happen through prayer.  Never doubt that. 

Well, I've got to go, so . . .

Love,

Elder Patty

ps. Elder Johnson is not in my zone anymore.