September 13, 2010
Mom, Dad, Family, Friends, Romans, Countryman, etc, lol
In Oklahoma I have tracted into several people who try and convert us, or more like "save" us. We talked to one lady for about 40min who had been part of some Christian Cult and had this deep sense of pity for us. As she talked about what she believed, I felt most of it was true and things that I have had my own witness of the Spirit of. She gave us this little pamphlet and asked us to read and pray about it, which we said we would in exchange for her reading and praying about The Book of Mormon. I think it is interesting that people have this pity and concern for our souls. I read the Bible, I know that Christ is my Savior, and I pray to Heavenly Father many, many times a day. People are so blinded by Satan. They do have a lot of truth but they can't see that there is more out there, that the Lord wants to bless them so much.
Talking to someone yesterday, Sister Goodell asked how he had accepted Christ into his life, and he replied, "through a simple prayer" and asked us if we had accepted Christ into our lives and we said of course, that we pray every day and that we know that it is through Christ that we are saved. It made me wonder, if all we had to do is say a simple prayer, why would the Lord give us commandments? I have come to see that commandments really are a blessing from the Lord. He knows us, he created us, so he obviously knows what is best for us in our lives. How can people balance the idea that all they have to do is say a prayer once, with the commandments that Christ and Heavenly Father have given throughout the history of man?
Thanks so much for the package--it came on September 9th. I love the food you sent, those bar things are yummy--they're already gone :) I made up some gnocchi yesterday for lunch and it was yummy too. Thanks so much for my shoes and blouse, I love them! When I came out, Sister Goodell was like, "You have such cute clothes, I want cute clothes!" So we are going out shopping today to get clothes that fit the new standards for sister missionaries, i.e. the only rules are that we dress professionally and femininely and not casually, and that skirts cover the knee when we are sitting. No rules about what color or dark or light or anything!
Oh, it was Sister Goodell's year mark on the 9th so we burned a skirt this week while we were visiting at a recently activated member’s home. (Sister Goodell is really good friends with them.)
Yesterday at dinner we were talking to a Sister who had gone on a mission about what we can do to involve the members in missionary work, because Sister Goodell has tried to ask for member referrals and doesn't feel it works very well out here. So what we are going to do is to ask the members (when we go over to dinner at their house) to pray for missionary experiences in every one of their prayers throughout the next week and tell us how it's going/went at church on Sunday. That way, members will start to have the spirit of missionary work, even if they don't have referrals or people for us to teach. We are also thinking of setting up more splits with the Young Women or sisters from the ward. We are supposed to be teaching 20 lessons a week, finding new people to teach, all while having daily contact with our investigators. And it's hard to balance all that when we can only go 25 miles in our car each day and we have really flaky investigators.
Oh! I wanted to tell you. We tracted yesterday in a neighborhood next to the Church of the Nazerene University and I realized something. We were tracting in the Nazerene Provo! At BYU I would see Jehovah Witnesses tracting and handing out flyers just south of campus where I lived and I was like, really? Why would you tract here? But I totally did that yesterday. It was pretty funny! :)
This week we taught someone that had requested a copy of The Book of Mormon, a very knowledgeable old farmer who had been through a lot and had studied a lot. He seemed very interested in what we had to say and we taught him The Restoration. But as soon as we asked him to do something about it (pray to know it's true, and be baptized after he found out it was true) he immediately started making excuses about his eyes being bad and not being able to read, etc. It was interesting to see the shift, from very interested, to polite, because we asked him to do something about what we taught. He was a very nice man, but it was sad to see the unwillingness to "experiment upon the word.”
Oh, it was funny, for dinner on Friday a member took us to Pizza Hut and it was weird hearing all the music I love and being surrounded by TV's, of course it was sports, which I don't care about. As I sat there listening to the music, I was like, "Oh that's right, I had a life where I listened to music like this!" Funny how quickly I forget. But our mission president hasn't given us any specific rules about music, just that it should bring the spirit, etc. So we listen to church music, classical music, and we are allowed to listen to gospel music, just not gospel rock. In fact my companion has a CD of a piano/classical arrangement of coldplay songs which is really great to listen too. But as I was sitting there at Pizza Hut I realized how the rules really are for my benefit. I haven't missed the music too much and I realized how easily my emotions are swayed by music and if I were still listening to typical music I don't think the Spirit would be able to guide me as well.
All in all I love being here and being a missionary. It's great to hear from you all and I love you all!!!
Love,
Sister Lila Jenson
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