Wednesday was the first day we actually went the whole day on a missionary schedule! We got up at 6:30, exercised, and then studied. For four hours straight.
When I first realized our study schedule was supposed to go for four hours, my first thought was that there was no way I could study the scriptures for that long. I mean, I love the scriptures, and I love Preach my Gospel, but four hours?
It didn't last long enough. I loved every second, and I didn't want it to end. I have never in my life sat down and studied for someone else, for how best to serve someone, and discussed the gospel and felt the guidance of the Spirit like I did that day. And the one hour of personal study is nowhere near sufficient for me to read and study all the things I want to read and study.
Then we had companion study/training, and then language study, which consisted of me butchering a lesson from Predicad mi Evangelio and attempting to read El Libro de Mormon in a proper Spanish accent. Even though Sister Moreno said I did very well, I'm not nearly as good enough as I wish I were (or as I should be after 5 years of Spanish.)
Then we sped through lunch and hit the road. Our first plan was to visit some of the part-member families in our ward, which was met with meager enthusiasm and minimal success. In spite of our rabid planning the day before, we didn't get a single lesson from any of them.
After that, we ran to the grocery store so I could stop mooching off my companion's food and actually get my own. (Honestly though, we shared food for the most part, which made things a lot less complicated.)
We went straight from there to help an older sister in our ward take apart and package her artificial Christmas tree. It was FREEZING that day, so she gave us some herbal tea. Yum!
Then we went to dinner with another sister in the ward who has done an incredible amount of family history work. She had a giant folder of names she had submitted to the temple. It was amazing to talk to her and to hear her love and appreciation for being involved in such a divine work.
We then went to visit a recent convert named Christina and her also recent convert son Jonathan. Christina was baptized almost a year ago, and she is extremely excited to be able to attend the temple. She was a great example to me of missionary work. She tells everyone she meets that she's LDS and says it with a wonderful pride and confidence, fully aware of the blessing the gospel is in her life. I want to be more like that, and not shrink away from bearing my testimony because I don't understand everything perfectly. She knows less than I do about the gospel but she shares what she does know with everyone she meets. I love that.
We left Christina and went to visit Gona and Sirvan. They are a young, recently married Muslim couple from Iran. The sisters have been teaching them for almost 3 months now, and it's amazing how much they've learned and grown. Sirvan had asked a question before about agency, and we explained to him how although God wants us to do what's right, we have the choice to do whatever we want while we're here on the earth. They had a few more questions about that, so we gave them the assignment to read from their Book of Mormon (in Persian!) 2 Nephi 2.
We returned home that night encouraged by the progress of Christina and Gona and Sirvan, but discouraged by our miniscule number of lessons. We planned for a better day on Thursday, but I had learned by then that things rarely go as you plan. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment