The Errand of Angels: Week 33 Goals are Great!

Hello Everyone!!

 I am grateful to be here!

Funny of the Week: Well, its summer time here in Florida. So, I don't have a specific funny thing to share, but the following have taken place this week: 1. Being drenched by rain and running with rain coats and umbrellas from our car to houses and back. 2. Screaming when finding bugs. I freaked out when I found a cockroach during service. Another one of my companions freaked out when a spider got on her. Yup, summer time brings rain and bugs. Yay, for Florida!

Talk of the Week: There were two that stuck out to me again... haha. Basically every talk I read stands out to me because they are all AMAZING!! 

In Elder Bruce D. Porter's talk, "Beautiful Mornings," He discusses not fearing the future and basically finding joy in God. Quote from this that I love "When our only desire is to please Him, we will be blessed with a deep inner peace." This is a great talk for those of you who are discouraged or downtrodden. God is on your side. Trust in Him, put Him first, and everything else will work out. Plus, with God, you can be truly HAPPY. http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/beautiful-mornings?lang=eng

The next one is a short message from this month's Ensign. A man shared his experience about putting God and His church calling first when he was going through law school at age 53. We shared this talk with a family this week; the father is taking the bar this coming week. He demonstrated his trust in God by coming to all three hours of church on Sunday. God will bless that man and anyone else who chooses to do the same! Its called, "With God Nothing Shall be Impossible." http://www.lds.org/ensign/2013/07/with-god-nothing-shall-be-impossible?lang=eng

Tender Mercy/Miracle of the Week: I would say the greatest tender mercy of the week was that we met many of our goals. One of them being, new investigators. We recently lost many of our investigators, including some with a baptismal date. This is always a sad thing, but luckily we have really tried hard in our companionship to just trust in God. So, that's what we did! We had a goal to find three new investigators this week. Our zone leaders gave the zone a goal to find 40, which means about five per companionship. 

We know that goals are inspired, so we moved forward in faith. We found an investigator early in the week, from a part-member family (it was so exciting and a very solid investigator!!), but after that we couldn't find anyone. We contacted all our referrals (yay!!) and set up a family mission plan, visited some other members and taught them some lessons asking for referrals, even did some tracting and street contacting (always talking to everyone, of course!), but nothing,

Finally Sunday night our zone only needed three more and we needed to find at least two more to reach our goal. After contacting our last referral and knocking that neighborhood we visited the house of a potential investigator we met a couple months ago. She was sitting on the porch and her kids were playing outside (we didn't get to meet them before). She was SO excited to see us. We were able to teach her and her children most of the first lesson. She wants her kids to baptized, but doesn't understand yet why she needs to be baptized. And was adamant that we come back soon! She told her children that we would be coming over every week to teach them about coming closer to Christ. Yup, she is awesome. When she was in foster care she lived with an LDS (Mormon) family. She loves the gospel and knows she needs Christ more in her life. 

I am so grateful for goals and for God helping us achieve them as we put faith in Him. We went home right after that lesson having completed that goal. Our zone also completed our goal of 40 new investigators.

With this experience, I also want to bear testimony of referrals. The reason we found this family in the first place was from a referral given at the beginning of the summer. We received a referral for her neighbor. The neighbor wasn't immediately receptive, but we knocked some other doors in the area because we know referrals are inspired. God led us to her family. We actually knocked her before the referral. So please, if someone comes to your mind, refer them to the missionaries. Its best if you introduce them yourself to the missionaries, but, regardless, refer them. They are inspired from God and miracles DO happen from them.

Other Highlights of the Week: So many of these! This is going to be a really LONG email... oh well! It just means life is extra awesome! 

We had an appointment drop and we knew that God had somewhere else for us to be (that always happens when an appointment drops), so we prayed and felt like we should visit our investigator, Tamika. We visited her and she broke down in tears. She was so overwhelmed that she was considering ending her life. She knew that God loved her and decided to accept the invitation to get a Priesthood blessing a couple days later. She is so prepared to hear the gospel, but she never has time to meet with us. Regardless, God is using us to help her.

Barry should be getting baptized this coming Sunday. He is so awesome and so prepared. He comes early for church and reads from the scriptures and/or watches church DVDs. When I say early, I mean over an hour. He is so awesome. Very, very prepared and very faithful! 

Two weeks ago the adversary was working super hard on our companionship. There were a lot of hurt and frustrated feelings. This week has been significantly better. The unity has dramatically increased as well as the love. Our lesson balance has also been better. I love companionship inventory. For those of you who don't know what this is, its a time to just sit down with your companionship and discuss the strength of your relationship, challenges, goals to improve, other companionship goals and personal goals. Its a really great experience.

We had a huge blessing this week from doing triple spits! All three of us split up and taught with members. We did almost all of our branch assignments for the week in 2.5 hours. It was a HUGE blessing. We taught 7 lessons during the time. Plus, the members really felt the power of missionary work.

Members have been so awesome this week! We have gotten fed almost every day, we have had a chance to teach them, teach with them, and setup family mission plans. They are so great!! We have many new family mission plan appointments scheduled for this coming week :)

Last Monday, Sister Jones took us all around St. Pete Beach and Pasa-grill Beach. It was so fun!! 

Pictures: Near the ocean on St. Pete Beach (Island)

  

Invitation: 1. Are you reading your scriptures everyday? If not, start today! Scripture study and prayers are a great way to put God first every day :)

I love you all! Have a wonderful day!

Sister Jenkins