Hey y'all, Happy Holidays!
This week was pretty great! I had quite the light bulb moment this week after talking to an investigator. We were talking to this guy and he mentioned that he goes to Church every single week. Since everyone goes to a different church around here "every week", we asked what Church he went to. He told us, "the one right der aroun dat corner." I didn't think anything of it until we were biking away, and decided to look for the Church on the corner. Well, needless to say, the only "church" that we could find on the corner was the big yellow Church's Chicken fast-food restaurant. HAHAHA I thought that was pretty hilarious! We solved the faithful church attendance mystery of the south :)
The work here is going well and we are working hard! We were able to experience some amazing miracles this week that I would like to share.
We were looking for a referral that we were given in an apartment complex, but didn't know that it was an apartment complex until we got there. The referral didn't have an apartment number in the information either, so we were a bit discouraged. We were about to bike away when we were prompted to talk to a man named John sitting on a bench outside the complex a little ways away. We ended up sharing the P.O.S lesson with him and finding out that he was waiting for a friend to come out and give her a ride to the store. We talked to him for a while and then the lady that he was waiting for came out and introduced herself as Glenda. She told us that she had been taught by missionaries in the past in New Orleans a couple years ago! She told us that she had moved across the city and the missionaries must have just lost track of her. She was excited when we assured her that we would love to start teaching her again! We met with her again later in the week and taught a wonderful Restoration lesson. We found out that she had started reading in the Book of Mormon in the index haha. Well, I guess that is a start. We are going to try and get her to come to Church this week as well.
One of our other progressing investigators is named Kim Turner. We had taught her a few times before the Holidays, and she was loving reading in the Book of Mormon. Every week we would come back and discuss what she had read so that was awesome. This week we committed her to come to Church! Sunday rolled around and we were a bit nervous when the rides to pick up Kim kept cancelling. However, it ended up being a success and Kim was able to make it to Church for the first time! We sat with her during sacrament meeting and she seemed to absolutely love it! She enjoyed singing the hymns and listening to the powerful testimonies that were shared. I found it also amazing that there seemed to be a theme to the testimonies shared this week. Almost every person shared about their baptism and lots of converts bore powerful testimonies about the truth of the Gospel. It was a wonderful sacrament meeting and the spirit was so strong. She told us after Relief Society that she loved the sisters in the ward and that they gave her a list of all of the activities. The Relief Society President is awesome and reached out to her so much. She even told her that she would be willing to pick her up for the all of the activities! What a blessing it is to have faithful selfless members. We look forward to seeing Kim progress and kindle those friendships in the Church, because that is soo important.
We also had several less active members come to Church this week so that was fantastic! We have still been working with the less active in our area, Grant Hiatt as well, and I think are getting so close. I will share more about him next week.
I love being a missionary and striving my very best to bring people unto Christ! I love reading the scriptures everyday and feeling of the love that He has for each and everyone of us. It has been a blessing to serve the Lord, and I hope that we can all strive to gain a closer relationship with Him this year. Thank you so much for the love and prayers. I hope y'all have a fantastic week!
Love,
Elder Wilson
