Oh and that's another thing, I've been able to practice my Spanish more this week which has been AMAZING, we have given time to studies and received some Spanish referrals from the nearby elders, most of them haven't been home... love that... ugh. BUT there was one guy that nearby Sisters had referred us and Hermana See and I had tried to go see and were never able to meet him but struggled HARD CORE through a conversation with his mom who knew absolutely no English. She did accept a pamphlet though, but then told us she couldn't read small print. Darn. But we went back this past week I was u-turning to park and caught a glimpse of a guy getting in His truck, which is when you pray a quick prayer with your eyes open, and jump out of the car to try to get him before he leaves. Which is exactly what happened. We were able to talk to him, actually both of us were because he spoke really good English so Sister Beare isn't a Spanish missioanry but she was still able to teach and testify as well, and I was able to use a nice mix of Spanish and English and talk to him too. He preached to us for a while about the Bible and Paul and dropped the word Gentiles which is basically like kicking the door open for us to be able to take hold of the reins and steer the conversation straight into the Book of Mormon, El Libro de Mormón. Which we did, and we gave him a copy, and he said that he would like to read it. We so hope and pray he does! It was great, and even though I lost my brand new gloves in the hopping out of the car excitement, it was worth it. So worth it. And I have reason to believe more Spanish opportunities are headed my way, so that's scary exciting. Scary because I feel like my Spanish is still MTC level, because it is, I lack faith that I'll ever understand conjugation anything. But the Lord has a plan and He'll help me even if He humbles me to the dust first.
BUT anyway, back to our week here. I titled this thing "demo day" in honor of one of my all time favorite and dearly missed home remodeling tv shows on HGTV: "FIXER UPPER" oh if I could be a missionary in Waco Texas I would march straight to Chip and Joanna Gaines' house and share the gospel, and then I'd go to all the their cute houses they have built and share it with the cute families that live in them, and anyone else who would listen. Oh boy, I must be a missionary... rereading that... hahaha oh well I'm leaving it, because it's so true, I think they would be the greatest little LDS family. And I heard that she is pregnant!!!! Yayyyy!!!! Ok I'm getting off track again, soooo on this fixer upper show, they have during their remodels and reconstructing what is called "demo day" when they go to town tearing apart, tearing down, and otherwise demolishing and gutting rooms and areas that need to be cleaned up and rebuilt. And that accurately and perfectly describes what Sister Beare and I have been doing in Greeneville. You see we have our area book, it's on our devices and contains the record and history (I sound like a writer in the Book of Mormon right now ;) of people that missionaries have contacted in the past but often haven't made it back to, for anywhere from 3-300 days! Actually scratch that, there was one lady that hadn't been seen for 1,200 days. That is over 3 years. Goodness. So we demolished our records. We went and tried to see sooo many of these people, got a feel for who they were and how much they knew and remembered about missionaries and the message we share, and if they wanted to learn more. A lot of the time the answer was not right now, a lot of the time they didn't even live there any more, so we were able to talk to the new people that lived there and see if they were interested.
It's so interesting to see how different missionaries work, being with different companions you see how many different perspectives and ways of doing missionary work there are. And the best part is there isn't one perfect way. There isn't one right way or one wrong way, the key is finding a good balance of what works for both of you and then going out and doing it. And that's what we have done. Sister Beare has taught me that there is value and importance in "dropping people" Which means we change the status of their records so it shows we aren't actively teaching them at this time but their records are still there for future missionaries to see and go follow up when prompted. She also has taught me there is value in deleting people's records. This one was shocking to me. If people haven't been taught very much or really aren't interested she has taught me that we can delete there records so 1: they don't clutter up our area book, 2: don't get pounded by missionaries who keep going back when they really aren't ready and 3: (this is my favorite one) it puts them back in the Lord's hands trusting that He will lead missionaries back when they are ready. I love that one. There have definitely been times I have gone to a house and talked to the person knowing a lot about them and they have been pretty rude, sometimes I wish that I could have gone into it not ever knowing that they had met missionaries before, not playing dumb but really just not even knowing anything about them... but trusting that the Spirit knows where they are and will lead us there. So this way allows for that. There have been some amazing miracles as a result two people that haven't been seen in months all of the sudden when we dropped them either called us, or a few days later we ran into them and reschedule an appointment. One guy literally 10 minutes after dropping someone, texted us and we have an appt with him tonight.
The culmination of this week, and miracle of miracles was on Sunday, of course. It seems that tender mercies always abound on Sundays. This one, wow this one goes down in the books. This guy we met last week at church came with a member family. He has had a rough upbringing but this family always took him in and helped him out. He knows a LOT about the church and made some really good comments in the gospel principles lesson we gave on the sacrament. We asked everyone in the class to ponder something they could sacrifice and bring it to the sacrament table the next week and offer it up. They said they would but honestly we weren't sure if anyone remembered, but this guy did. In fast and testimony meeting he got up and bore a sweet and sincere testimony of his experiences learning about the church and being in the member family's home. He then came up to us after gospel principles and said that he had thought a lot about what we asked the class to do last week, that he offered up his cigarettes this week, he is going to quit smoking. And then he said, "I've decided I'm committed and I've been thinking about baptism and going to the temple and I want to get there." Ummmm yeah, so we have never even taught this guy before! He is so amazing! And let me also say through all of our cleaning out we have been doing in our area book we found his information and have been able to update it and hopefully start teaching him! We are so excited!!!!
Overall it has been such an incredible week, I've learned a lot, worked a lot, laughed a lot, and come home so tired every day. It's great. That's what I want to do every day is come home tired, and at the end of my mission come home tired, and at the end of my life: come home tired.
I had a random song pop into my mind as I was doing laundry this morning... It's by the Mowgli's and it's called "I'm Good" the chorus says something like: "I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, living life just like I should, wouldn't change it if I could I'm good I'm good I'm good!"
I'm so good, and hope y'all are too! Keep sharing the gospel by living the gospel, work hard, play hard, demo what needs to be cleared and cleaned away and come home tired!
Love y'all
Love,
Hermana Hall
P.S.
This is a random funny story that I wanted to include... we were over at a member's house and they were talking about how they tried to space having their kids apart by 2 or 3 years and the mom turned to their daughter and said "We wanted you to come sooner but you must have gotten lost somewhere and taken a detour or something" without missing a beat the little girl goes "I took the stairs!" Hahaha! Oh how I love little kids!!!!! The youngest boy in this same family threw something at Sister Beare giggled and yelled "LEGENDARY!!!!" Hahahahahaha again, so funny!!!!
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