My Dearest Family!!!
Well, the movecall is coming to an end! This is the last week and the work has been a bit rougher this movecall. But that is just how it goes sometimes. About our investigators, they have all pretty much stopped progressing! It is so hard sometimes to figure out how best to help them keep commitments and make it to church. One thing my companion and I have decided to be more diligent on is writing down the commitments we give and planning very specific follow ups. However, they still have their agency and this Sunday only one of our investigators came to church. We have some really amazing people, but it they are all really really busy. True conversion doesn't occur until people decided to do the little things--pray often, read from the Book of Mormon daily, and attend church every week. Right now only one investigator, L, is even coming close to doing those three things somewhat regularly. She has a desire to change and become better. Sunday when I called to make sure she was going to catch the bus for church, she told me she was making an effort to look extra pretty for church. I was proud of her for trying. It was pretty cute :). One really good thing that happened was that Sister Devictoria arranged for her to sit down with the bishop after church. We all sat down with him and he was very good to her. His wife helped in a lesson for her at her home before I came here, so he knows a little about her. He asked her about her illness and family life and gave her some commitments. I think if she keeps her commitments and really repents, she should be baptized. We will see though as we keep working with her. But besides her, our other two progressing investigators both did not attend church.
One really great thing that happened this week was we had a great lesson with Y. We had the lesson at the bishop's house with his wife. Our ward missionary came too. I felt like they were really excited about her and tried hard to become friends with her. She really loves how the church helps her children and she also really loves the free English class on Wednesday. Because she brought her kids, we started a children's class and she invited all her neighbors too!! So now we have five to seven little children that come every week--with two or three moms too! We are planning to have a member and her children come so that they can have a member friend, which hopefully will give them more interest in investigating the church. So we are pretty excited about that! One of the moms even made me and the class bread to share last week! It was great :).
What has really been a focus of late is part member families. We found this cool ward list that lists heads of households and all the members, if they are married, have children, etc. So we can kind of guess who is a part member family from it. We have been mapping them out and visiting the areas with high concentrations of them, and we have found some really great people! We only started last week, but hopefully this week we will see more of the fruit of our labors. Also this has been great at updating the ward's information and getting in touch with less actives. We have called through the ward list asking for referrals, and through that found a lot of less actives. One we set up a time for and it was amazing! She hasn't been to church in awhile and is leaving in September for a year working abroad. She was thinking that maybe it would be a good time to go back to church and then, bam, Sister Devictoria calls and sets up with her. She really felt it was like God answering her question and she agreed for us to give her information to the missionaries in her new area! It was awesome!! This Sunday we did have quite a few less actives (five) show up at church! It was great--and all had either been visited by us or received a note from us recently. A ward activity is also coming up in one of our wards where they are going to write notes to the less actives, so we are excited for the ward to get more involved.
Well, all for now!! But I love you all so much and can't wait to hear from you next week :)
---Sister Brooke Smith
Well, the movecall is coming to an end! This is the last week and the work has been a bit rougher this movecall. But that is just how it goes sometimes. About our investigators, they have all pretty much stopped progressing! It is so hard sometimes to figure out how best to help them keep commitments and make it to church. One thing my companion and I have decided to be more diligent on is writing down the commitments we give and planning very specific follow ups. However, they still have their agency and this Sunday only one of our investigators came to church. We have some really amazing people, but it they are all really really busy. True conversion doesn't occur until people decided to do the little things--pray often, read from the Book of Mormon daily, and attend church every week. Right now only one investigator, L, is even coming close to doing those three things somewhat regularly. She has a desire to change and become better. Sunday when I called to make sure she was going to catch the bus for church, she told me she was making an effort to look extra pretty for church. I was proud of her for trying. It was pretty cute :). One really good thing that happened was that Sister Devictoria arranged for her to sit down with the bishop after church. We all sat down with him and he was very good to her. His wife helped in a lesson for her at her home before I came here, so he knows a little about her. He asked her about her illness and family life and gave her some commitments. I think if she keeps her commitments and really repents, she should be baptized. We will see though as we keep working with her. But besides her, our other two progressing investigators both did not attend church.
One really great thing that happened this week was we had a great lesson with Y. We had the lesson at the bishop's house with his wife. Our ward missionary came too. I felt like they were really excited about her and tried hard to become friends with her. She really loves how the church helps her children and she also really loves the free English class on Wednesday. Because she brought her kids, we started a children's class and she invited all her neighbors too!! So now we have five to seven little children that come every week--with two or three moms too! We are planning to have a member and her children come so that they can have a member friend, which hopefully will give them more interest in investigating the church. So we are pretty excited about that! One of the moms even made me and the class bread to share last week! It was great :).
What has really been a focus of late is part member families. We found this cool ward list that lists heads of households and all the members, if they are married, have children, etc. So we can kind of guess who is a part member family from it. We have been mapping them out and visiting the areas with high concentrations of them, and we have found some really great people! We only started last week, but hopefully this week we will see more of the fruit of our labors. Also this has been great at updating the ward's information and getting in touch with less actives. We have called through the ward list asking for referrals, and through that found a lot of less actives. One we set up a time for and it was amazing! She hasn't been to church in awhile and is leaving in September for a year working abroad. She was thinking that maybe it would be a good time to go back to church and then, bam, Sister Devictoria calls and sets up with her. She really felt it was like God answering her question and she agreed for us to give her information to the missionaries in her new area! It was awesome!! This Sunday we did have quite a few less actives (five) show up at church! It was great--and all had either been visited by us or received a note from us recently. A ward activity is also coming up in one of our wards where they are going to write notes to the less actives, so we are excited for the ward to get more involved.
Well, all for now!! But I love you all so much and can't wait to hear from you next week :)
---Sister Brooke Smith
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