Omaha week 3

Dear friends and family,

The phrase I most often write in my journal each night is: "It's been an interesting day."

Every day is interesting. Every day requires patience because frustrating things happen. Every day requires gratitude because fantastic things happen.

I've been building to the idea that we have to have both the faith that the Lord will make up for our inadequecies and the faith to take the first step, allowing Him to do that.

Does that make sense? An example: we spend a lot of time visiting lists of people who have had contact with the church or are inactive. We have the faith that someone on those lists has been prepared. We have the faith that we will be lead to them. But we also need to have the faith to go try those doors, call those numbers, and keep trying more than just the first person who isn't interested.

How about a metaphor? How about a food metaphor? Yum. So you've got a new recipe to try out, you know that it is supposed to turn out like the picture, but you have to be confident that when you start putting the ingredients together, it's going to work. And it actually might not work the first time you try. So you have to have more faith to try again.

So I'm realizing that this is a pretty basic idea. But it means so much when you do it over and over again!

 

This week our investigator Micah told us that she needed some space.

This week we gained a new investigator. His name is Christian and though his mom is Buddhist, he's Christian. :) We were looking for him mom last week and found him, he asked for his mom's permission to talk to us and we had a mini lesson on Thursday and taught him about the Restoration on Sunday. He committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon to know of its truth and, as he came to know, be baptized.

It was pretty great.

 

Saturday, while studying, there was a knock at the door. We ran upstairs and answered it. A man named Mike Roberts was there to fix the Fredrick's TV. We led him to the TV in question and as we turned to leave he said, "Your nametag, I think that's really cool. Religion is a huge part of my life." Oh, REALLY?

We ended up talking with him for 3 hours while he fixed the TV. He'd met and heard about the church and had a lot of very honest questions. We explained a lot to him and he said he really understood a lot. He told us about his life and his conversion to the church he attends now. He shared some beautiful music with us. He took a Book of Mormon with him. It was utterly fantastic. I don't know if we'll ever see him again or if he'll ever join the church, but I really finally felt like a missionary. He was an answer to my prayers, that whole conversation was.

 

Our mission president has challenged everyone, missionaries, investigators, members, to read 30 minutes every day from the Book of Mormon. I have seen people here acting upon that and seeing real changes in their lives. It's changing my life. When President Weston challenged me to do it and I accepted, he said, "For the rest of your life? That's a long time?" Well, it's REALLY IMPORTANT.

 

It's cool to see the hastening of the work. It's a wakeup call to what I need to be doing for the rest of my life and how important it is to be doing missionary work after my mission.

 

Preach My Gospel is amazing. It has all the answers. In conjunction to the scriptures. :)

 

I forgot what questions I wanted to answer. The weather's still nice. Humidity exists and isn't awful. The trees are amazing. We still get lost. :)

 

We get to go to the temple on the 30th. And on the 29th Elder Robbins from the 70 is coming to our Zone Meeting. Lots of fun!

 

I love you all! If you have any questions, write me! If you don't, write me anyway and tell me all about your life!

 

Congrats to Amanda Maxwell! The rest of you, let me know if you get engaged or a mission call or something crazy like that! That means you, Walker. The mission call, that is.

 

Alright, bye. :)

 

-Sister Amanda Peterson