Monday, September 21, 2015

Temple trip

Our temple trip was great! The Gila Valley temple is so pretty and it was definitely a neat experience! On Tuesday we got up a little early and headed up to the temple around 8.  It’s a 2 hour drive there, but it was really pretty and worth it! Once we got there, we stopped and had lunch at this Hawaiian grill that gives missionaries a discount. Then we went and attended our session. It was mostly just our zone and a few other older couples. Afterwards we took some zone pictures that I will get to you eventually since they're all on Elder Stidham's camera.  So it may be a while. Then after we drove back and spent the rest of our day doing what we normally do!

Wednesday we had district meeting which was good. Our district leader asked me to give a short training on temples. I just talked about how important it is to get our recent converts focused on going to the temples and not to let investigators get the idea that baptism is the stopping point. I think it went pretty well.   I was really grateful for the chance to bear my testimony on the importance of temples, because that's something really important to me. I am just so grateful for temples because the veil is so thin there, and it's so easy to feel God's love for all of his children there. I always feel healed from all of my worries every time I go there.

So funny story! Every week we have to set goals to accomplish throughout the week and so this week because we hadn't done so well the week before in visiting enough less actives/ recent converts we set our goal a little lower than usual.  We also figured that since we would be at the temple all day Tuesday we wouldn't be able to get as much done, but this week was crazy and somehow we managed to have 11 visits with them which is more than what our highest goal has been since I got here! 

This week we also got to go knocking again which was not as effective as it was last time, but it wasn't bad. One of the last houses we knocked on we waited for about 5 minutes at the door, because this lady kept yelling from inside that she was coming.  When she finally opened the door she was really excited to see us.  She didn't have time for a lesson right then, but she invited us to come over the next night to visit her.  She also told us that we should go visit her neighbors because they were super nice people. It was a bit surprising, but we were happy about it. Sadly her neighbor wasn't home, but that leads to another story. The next night we went back at the time she had asked us to come.  We had tried to call her beforehand, but her phone wasn't working, and sadly she wasn't home.  However, as we were leaving we ran into her neighbor and started talking to him. He was really drunk. It took me a few minutes to realize it, but then he started asking us if we were twins and telling us about how he would throw Holy water on her house sometimes because she has a lot of struggles and needs some help from God.  He went off about how he is no angel, but he tries to be or something like that anyways it was kinda funny.  From the sound of it, she could really use the Gospel in her life, so we are going to try visiting her again tonight.

We also got to visit with one of our new investigators. We're really excited about her. It turns out that half her family is Catholic and the other half is LDS including her husband who is just like super inactive and now going to another church.  She seems like she will be good to teach because she has a lot of questions which means she's thinking and genuinely wants to find out for herself.

This week our ward mission leader also encouraged us to start using the talk the Sabbath is a Delight to teach our less actives the importance of the Sabbath day.  It was cool because I had read that talk a few weeks ago and had tried to do the same thing. We've been using that a lot lately though. There is one less active who has a really strong testimony of the Gospel, but she works on Sunday.   Sometimes we get scared about being super bold with them, but for some reason we decided that we needed to watch that talk with her. The Spirit was super strong and we were able to talk to her and encourage her to keep the Sabbath day Holy and try to find a new job. She had told us she had been and hadn't found one yet.  I just got this really strong prompting that I should ask her if she had tried fasting about it. She said she hadn't and that she would try it. We haven't gone back to see her yet since then, but I know that with that act of faith God will help her find a new job especially since she is trying to keep His commandments.

Some more good news! I finally got to extend a baptismal date to the 12 year old girl we've been working with! We set it for October 17 the same day as the Tucson temple ground breaking! I am super excited for her! She seemed nervous and unsure if she's ready, but we promised her that we will make sure that she is! It was actually super cool because the day we were planning on visiting her I had spent my whole hour of studying reading my patriarchal blessing.  I didn't think that I would be able got gain revelation of what to teach others from it, but something just really hit me in it.  I was prompted that we needed to change our lesson plan from talking about temples and families, and instead talk about the Savior and how much he loves us using the scripture in 1 Nephi 21:15-16 and talking about how He suffered for us and will never forget us because we are inscribed on his palms.  He kept those scars to remind us that He died for us and to show He knows us each individually. It turned out being the perfect lesson. God has definitely been guiding me every single day. 

That's about all that happened this week!
Love you!
Love,
Hermana Burgoyne




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