Quarantine update: I hit day 50 of quarantine this week and Ohio doesn't open up until the end of May at the earliest. We're expecting a large amount of new missionaries pretty soon as well, but we don't know when they'll be here. As strange as all these changes have been, it's been super exciting to be here to witness them.
Y'all remember the girl I talked about last week, Emily, who found me through Tumblr? Well, we put her on date for baptism last night! Our lesson with her last week went super well and one of her first questions for us was when she could be baptized. We set up another lesson with her for yesterday and stayed in touch with her every day last week as we shared chapters from the Book of Mormon with her and she shared her thoughts and testimony with us. Yesterday we started with the first official missionary lesson, The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and by the end we invited her to work towards the goal of being baptized on July 11 (shoutout to my siblings Julaine and Jaren who's birthday is that day!), so which she excitedly agreed! Of course, I won't even get to go to her baptism because Texas is a little far away, but I'm super excited to help her towards that goal until we can get her passed over to the missionaries in her area.
In addition to putting Emily on date, we prayed really hard to find someone new to teach yesterday and we were blessed to find someone who was interested in hearing more THREE MINUTES BEFORE OUR DAY ENDED. We called a bunch of people who used to be taught by missionaries and didn't get any answers until 8:57 pm when we called a wrong number and ended up talking to another woman who asked us to call her tonight!
We also got some training on Facebook finding this week through our new Facebook pages for our mission and we have officially taken a step in a completely different way as missionaries. In addition to our usual missionary duties, we now get to send in posts and videos for the Facebook page. In a mission in New Jersey (if I'm remembering correctly) they've found that 1 two sentence post with a picture can bring in as many as 40 referrals, and in 8 months they had 20 baptisms from referrals through Facebook. While numbers are not something we focus on as missionaries, these numbers are neat because they show that, while we can't be outside contacting during COVID-19, we still have the opportunity to share the gospel just as well as before.
I was studying the word "Conversion" this week in the Bible Dictionary and I ran across a sentence I really liked: "Complete conversion comes after many trials and much testing."
Along with it was a scripture from Doctrine and Covenants that I really liked:
D&C 11:13 "And after their temptations, and much tribulation, behold, I, the Lord, will feel after them, and if they harden not their hearts, and stiffen not their necks against me, they shall be converted, and I will heal them."
This really struck me because I've seen my testimony grow more than ever as I've relied on my Heavenly Father through the times that have been the hardest on me. Many people ask "why do bad things happen to good people" but forget to realize that those hard things can really be a blessing. Now, I'd like to be very clear in saying that I don't think God micromanages our trials. He loves us and he wants to see us happy. So when I say that trials can be a blessing to us I don't mean that our Heavenly Father is watching over us, throwing things our way saying "Oh, let's see how she'll handle that" or "I wonder if he can get through this.". What I do mean is that we all go through trials - being stuck inside for quarantine, losing a loved one, dealing with an addiction, struggling with mental health, and so much more - but we don't have to only see them as trials. Trials give us the opportunity to turn to the Lord and say "I can't do this on my own. But with your help I can do anything." Trials help us grow because we learn what we can handle with the help of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I've seen my conversion grow through trials because those are the times when I've prayed the hardest and studied my scriptures the most. I hope you all can look at this COVID-19 trial as more than just a trial, but also a time to prove to yourself what you can handle and a time to grow in ways that you wouldn't otherwise have grown.
Quote of the week:
"He looks like he belongs in the dump. But in a good way" -A random guy telling us about his dog as we talked past his house during exercise.
Have a great week!
Love,
Sister Bliss
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