We just got back from Zone croquet and kickball. I beat everyone at croquet because it's a fancy sport and I'm fancy. I opted out of the kickball, and chose to be team support but then they brought out a ginormous exercise ball to play with. Oh man, that had to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen. People kicking and catching a ball bigger than them. Elders come up with some rather interesting 'safe' activities. It was hilarious. Then later, the Elders were blowing up carrots in the microwave. So. Yeah.
Let's see, more adventures on the streets this week. For the record, I am SO grateful we don't have to knock on doors for investigators in this mission. The other day we were stopping by a slippery investigator and they yelled, 'Who is it?" The Sister Missionaries. Pause..."No one is here!" Oh ok. Got it. So then we headed over to a recent convert's home. The lights were on, all things looked good. Knock, knock. Lights off. Oh ok. Got it. 10 seconds later. Sprinklers. What? Seriously. We got the message. You really can only laugh in those situations. At least I haven't been chased by dogs. Yet.
On non rejection days, the BINGO folks love me. I had to miss one day for a meeting and when I came back they were clapping and cheering. It was so adorable. They've started repeating how I call most numbers now. It's so awesome. I'm so popular with old people. We are kindred spirits. One of my biggest fans, mainly because I put his daily eye drops in for him, called me over and asked where I was the other day. He said the skinny one was there, but that I, the not skinny one (yes he said that) wasn't. And then gave me a lemon tart. It was good. I think he knew I would like it more than the skinny one. He is from the Philippines, is like 90, rides a wheelchair and announces his coming with 'meep meep,' like a Muppet. He's my favorite.
This week I had some rocking experiences with prayer. I've never been really good at praying, let's face it I'm not really good at a lot of spiritual things - how did they let me wear this name tag?! But, we had a zone meeting this week and they put all of our numbers up on the board for everyone to see. I was mortified. I felt like we'd been working really hard and doing really well and then I saw the numbers of the other companionships in our zone. Wow. They wasted us, by like a lot. Now, we had the only baptism in the zone so that made up for a lot, but the rest of our numbers were abysmal, and not Joey's definition of the word. I told my comp we can't let that happen again so we started to pray that we could meet our weekly goals. It was Friday and were down by 10 lessons and we had 3 hours left in the day and a dinner appointment with one of my favorite families but they are just never ready on time and we end up being there forever. We said a pleading prayer that we could find people to teach and that dinner could be ready on time for us to find more. Five minutes after we got out of the car we had a lesson with a member's neighbor. Sure, he was saying crazy things like he could tell in my eyes that I was intelligent so he wanted to know who birthed God, but still, it was a lesson. When we got to the members' home the food was on the table. It was a Christmas miracle! Long story short, we miraculously met our lesson goal this week. I know this was an answer to our sincere prayer to a loving Heavenly Father.
Prayer is absolutely vital to missionary work (and life, of course) and I'm quickly gaining a testimony of it's power that I never really bothered to notice before. As we kneel down in humble prayer recognizing our weaknesses, thanking for all the tender mercies we receive and ask for our Father to guide us, to comfort us, to help us, I know He will. I have seen this a billion times already in just 4 months and just this week I received another huge testimony of the power of prayer. I found a recent Ensign article about the power of prayer. The author was a Bishop at one point and when people would come to him in trouble the first thing he would ask about is their relationship with prayer. Many would say yes, I know I need to work on prayer, now how do I fix my problems. I chuckled as I read this because I think that is how I felt most of my life. I just didn't see the value in this thing that is, in reality, so precious. Satan doesn't help, he doesn't want us to pray, which should only add to the convincing evidence of its power. Day by day, I'm learning how to better communicate with my Father in Heaven and I'm seeing the change in my life and in my heart. There is never a time when our Heavenly Father does not want to hear from us. He is waiting to bless us, but because of our gift of agency, we must come to Him and ask in prayer. There is nothing sweeter than watching an investigator pray to their Father for the first time and we can have this sweet experience all the time. If you feel as I did: "yeah yeah prayer...now let's fix my problems" - please believe me that the answer really, truly can be found in humble prayer. It may not be immediate, but as we practice this relationship and as we search for the answers our hearts and minds will be filled. It's pretty sweet.
xoxo,
Hermana Hall
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