The title is a quote directly from me. At our zone
conference lunch I was sitting with Sister Strong and a few other senior
sisters and they were talking about how it's a good thing that the Elders and
Sisters naturally segregate. Someone jokingly said, "Yeah, Sister Slade is
pretty flirty." and I replied with, "Yeah, the Elders might take my
silence the wrong way." It was really funny because up to that point I
hadn't said that much. In fact, Sister Strong said that that was the funniest thing
she's ever heard.
This
week has been wild! We were finally able to meet with our mission president one
on one and it was very insightful. Basically, he told us that we have nothing
to lose. This area hasn't had a baptism in 16 months and so we concluded that
what we're doing is not working. He gave us a couple of crazy ideas to try like
finding a reason to go to the Walmart Distribution Center, or creating a
fundraiser and involving local businesses in it. He basically gave us
permission to do whatever we want to try in this area because like he said,
there's nothing to lose.
This
completely changed our mindset, so that night we decided to completely
rearrange the apartment and then we got to work. We had so many miracles happen
that it was impossible to ignore the hand of the Lord in the work. For example,
yesterday we were out walking and saw someone moving in and asked if we could
help. It turned out that the couple who was moving in were the only nonmembers
in their whole family. They even had a niece on a mission. Their daughter who
was helping them move said that their parents are very prepared for the gospel
and they saw it as a miracle that we had met their parents on their first day
in the area.
Or when
we were talking to a member we found out that she could get us into the
Distribution Center with a little work. We found another member who can help us
with an English class we're planning on teaching to the little India we have in
our area. We had so many people placed in our path and for the first time we were
able to reach the mission goal of having quality conversations with 11 people a
day. The timing of everything that happened could not have been a coincidence.
I don't believe in a God of coincidences. Everything was planned to happen by
the Lord. It was an amazing week!
We also
had zone conference this week and I had to teach one of the workshops on
conversion. It was terrifying and fortunately, the mission didn't blow up
because of what I taught. In the other workshop, we wrote down the things that
were holding us back from being fully committed on a paper boat and then we
went into the church parking lot and burnt the boats. It was a lot of fun, but
it was also super powerful to be able to have an action involved in giving our
fears up.
I love you!
-- Sister Slade
pictures:
1. Sister Boyack while we were serving meals on wheels.2. While cleaning, we found a bunch of black mold along the window sill
3. The paper boats
4. While rearranging, we accidentally broke our bookshelf so
we taped it to our lamp to keep it standing
5. We fixed our book shelf
6. Random picture of sister Boyack and I
7. All of our boats
8. Zone conference lunch
9. My zone
No comments:
Post a Comment