Chapter 59: Just love 'em
This week, I learned a very important lesson the
hard way. Last Monday night, we were teaching Marlon, our golden atheist the
Restoration. We were really excited to teach him this lesson, because we
thought that it would help everything just “click”. However, as the lesson
progressed, it soon turned into something....different. I don´t really even
know how to explain what happened. He just started getting very defensive about
philosophy, and how it was a better way to understand life than religion, and
much more that I don´t even remember. And as much as we tried to convince him
there was a God, the more he rejected it. What happened? We finally just
decided to let it go, and end with a prayer, and try to save a little bit of
the spirit. We told him we were all going to kneel down and say a prayer, but
that after the prayer we were going to sit and wait, and not immediately jump
up—that this is the way to receive an answer from God. He said the prayer, and
it was sincere enough, and we sat and waited, and waited, and waited. I peaked
open one of my eyes afterwards.....and saw everyone still had their eyes
closed, and we sat in a kind of an awkward silence. He finally opened his eyes and said, “I don´t feel any different than I did ten
minutes ago.” I was slightly frustrated, but I assured him that it was ok, and
that he should just keep doing it with his nightly scripture study (he´s almost
done with 1 Nephi). After the cita, I just kind of stood there asking myself,
“Why on earth could he not feel the spirit??” As I sat there and meditated a
minute, I thought honestly, “Well, I didn´t either. I didn´t feel anything
after that prayer either.” It really struck me that I honestly had not felt the
spirit...so that night as I was on my knees praying for direction a scripture
came to my mind. It´s John 15: 16-17 “Ye
have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,
and ordained you,
that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that
whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that ye
love one another.”
That
was it!! I can honestly say, I was not feeling very much love during that
lesson. I wanted more to throw the doctrines at him than really love him and
desire his understanding. It was a big awakening moment for me. Truly, the most
important part of this work is love. When we have a true love for the people we
are serving, that is when we see the miracles. If I want my investigators to
repent and come unto Christ, I have to do the same myself. It´s a constant
process. So, I have really been working on just loving the people this week,
and we definitely were blessed with some miracles. All the young men were on a
campout this week, and two of them are recent converts and only members in
their families. So, while they were gone, we arranged girl nights with their
mom and sisters. The first one went fantastically! The mother and the sister
had both investigated the church in the past. In fact, the daughter even had a
baptismal date planned and everything, but right before I got here, it fell
through, and she didn´t want much to do with the church. So, we planned this
lesson on the blessings and joy that comes from the gospel, and we talked about
the church strengthening the family. They were both in tears at the end of the
lesson, hugging, and promising they would come to church. (However, they
disappeared when Sunday came, and we haven´t seen them...but
we did our job in making sure they had a spiritual experience). Then, on Saturday night, we met with Josep. Our Catalan,
Catalan!! Anyway, we had been trying to have him understand our relationship
that we have with God, and then we thought of this video called...ummm
translation I think would be Earthly Father, Heavenly Father. It´s a Mormon
Message that we all really like here. Anyway, we showed it to him, and it
really struck his heart. (He even shared it on Facebook afterwards) However, he
is really “manly” and doesn´t like to show his emotions, so when he gets
touched, he runs out of the room and changes the subject. Every time. It´s
really hard to teach him! He has been taught since like December, and no one
has ever been able to even bring up the prospect of being baptized. We have
been planning on inviting him to be baptized for weeks now, and it just always
gets interrupted. This time the interruption was even more tempting. He brought
out two big plates of fresh paella. Yum. But, we had planned that we were going
to talk about it, and we weren´t going to let this delicious plate of food get
in our way! So my companion and I looked at each other and stuffed it down as
fast as we could. We got back on the subject, and invited him to be baptized. He
still had doubts if God even answers prayers, but we knew that we had to give
him something to ask Him about. If he wants to know if God answers prayers,
he´s got to ask Him a specific question, right? So to our complete and utter
shock, he said he would pray about being baptized in a few weeks. What??? We
have been struggling to get him to pray just on his own, let alone inviting him
to be baptized. And another miracle happened in this cita as well. His 11 year
old daughter finally prayed as well! I think that it will be through her that
will be the key for everything. They are very close and do everything together.
I just pray that he will be able to receive his answer. We also had a really
powerful lesson with the mother of another recent convert. Well, technically he
was baptized exactly a year ago, so not exactly recent convert, but still. We
have wanted more than anything than to unite this family in the church. The mom
is so sweet. She is our little Peruvian madre. She always has us over at night
and gives us food, and is just so great. She is like a dry Mormon! (just needs
a little water...) We talked about the tree of life, and then had José Luis
bear his testimony. It brought in such a sweet spirit, and then we decided to
talk about temples. And how a lot of people believe they will just be together
forever if they are baptized, or hope for the best better put, but really there
are actual ordinances that you can do to secure this eternal relationship. It
was so sweet, but she still said she would have to pray and read. Of course!
The sad thing is, she is going to Peru for the next month and half, so we won´t be able to meet
with her for a while. She took us out to get Chinese food today to say goodbye
with transfers next week as well. We´re going to miss her. It was also
Mothers´Day this last week here in Spain , so we decided we were going to deliver goodies and cards
to all the mothers that live in our area. My feet hurt so bad at the end of the
day! There were a lot more members than we thought. Hahaha It took us all
afternoon, but at least all the women had a little treat from us missionaries.
:) I am so grateful to have a loving madre especially during this week. Just a
little shout out Mom :) I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Les
Quiero,
Hermana Hopkins
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