Monday, March 3, 2014

Week 46 - I'm not Flippin Johnny Appleseed!

Hey there familia!
 
Aahhh!! So this week has been so gosh dang frustrating!!  We had an awesome lesson with Ricardo at a member's home on Tuesday and it went so well!   The whole family jumped in and things were just flowing away, at the end we committed him to pray and come to church, his response was oh yeah of course I'm gonna do that!.. but did he... NO:/ sweet mercy.  I have felt like we just keep hitting all these dead ends.  We'll have this little glimmer of hope and then it just disappears. 
 
I was reading in Alma 8 though and a member pointed something out that was pretty interesting, so Alma decides to come back to Ammonihah right?  And when he comes back he meets up with Amulek (the member) and in verse 27 it says and he tarried with Amulek for many days before going out and preaching.   Well I took that as ok we're taking a step back, and we're going to build our relationships up with the members here before we go out and try to preach again which is mildly frustrating cuz you would think after 5 months I'd have good relationships with the members, and honestly most of them i do. But there are a couple more families that we need to get to. I'm just constantly praying that the Lord will help a sister out! 
 
We went and visited the Swopes this week.  They are an older couple and I absolutely adore them!  So brother Swope has had a TON of health issues, he can't really see, he can barely hear, and it's pretty tough for him to get around, but I still think he's the greatest and when you see his wife take care of him it seriously melts your heart.  But, anyways, he showed me his man cave and I just about died! He has a wall of signed baseballs! A WALL OF THEM!  He has a boxing glove signed by Muhammed Ali and a giant sneaker signed by Karl Malone!!  I was drooling over everything!!  Hahaha but really it was pretty neat. 
 
On Wednesday after our ward correlation meeting I was walking around talking to some of the youth and I decided to just give a couple of them Books of Mormon to hand out.  I challenged a couple of them to give them to a friend before Sunday and guess what!  My favorite 12-year-old, Colby Allen, came up to me during church and said look at this as he handed me his phone and there was a picture of his friend holding the Book of Mormon and smiling:]  Haha i felt like a proud little mother!  It was a cool moment to see that he did go and do the thing that I had just casually challenged him.  He's number 1 and I'm grateful for the fearless youth that we do have.
 
Gosh well,  I wish that I had some awesome story to throw down and share, but honestly I have NONE!  We'll have this awesome lessons with less actives and potential investigators and then.. it just goes nowhere.  Yesterday we were talking to people before sacrament meeting started and a member came up to us and said how's the work?  I wasn't sure how to respond so I said "Oh, well as you can see, no one is here with us today."  He made the comment "ya know sisters you're kinda like Johnny Appleseed, just leaving seeds everywhere you go."  In my head I was seriously yelling NOOOOOO!! I am not Johnny Appleseed!  Ah, I refuse to accept that, there is so much work to be done!  I got up to bear my testimony and for some reason I felt prompted to tell them the "my best friend Des" story where she asked me about what we believe and I told her I didn't wanna talk about it.  Surprisingly, I had a lot of members that felt touched by that story.. heck, I just can't figure these people out!  I love them, I really do, I just don't know how to motivate them to be more missionary minded.  BUT I think that's enough pity party from this missionary!  Seriously life is really good, I love this work and all the many blessings that come with it:] 

Love, Sister Bowden
 

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