May 2, 2016

So we are just really struggling to find new investigators lately!! We tract a whole lot and no one wants to let us come back. (we still follow up a lot, don't worry) But no one is ever interested and it's kind of a bummer, but we are still working hard! I am definitely learning a lot though. So we meet mostly catholics, and maybe I have talked about this before, but they are just so stuck in their ways and they don't even do anything about it. Like so sometimes we do a survey to get to know people's beliefs and start up a conversation. So we ask people if they believe in God and Jesus Christ and we ask if they believe the Bible to be the word of God or just a history book and catholics will be like yes it's the word of God completely! And so we will ask them if they read from it, and they will be like well, no, I hear readings at church and that's good enough. So then we will ask them if they would read another book that was written by prophets that testified of Jesus Christ and they always say no, and we ask why and they will usually say well because all we need is a Bible. (which funny, bc the BOM literally says that people will say all they need is the bible, so they are literally proving the BOM true right there, hahah) so yeah. We usually ask them also how their faith has blessed their life and all they say is well I go to church every week and I pray! Which.. what? That doesn't help me see how that blesses your life... I don't know. It just makes me sad that they have all these beliefs, yet they don't act on them whatsoever. If we have faith then we need to act on that faith! We need to constantly be feasting on the words of the Lord and learning more and praying and studying the scriptures and doing all that we can to come closer to Christ and grow and change and be better. Sorry for my little rant, but I am just seeing how important it is to act on our faith, or else we won't grow at all, and that won't get us anywhere. 

Anyways! We had a lesson with M on... Tuesday and it went SO well. Malia came (the girl that got home from her mission in December) and it was a great lesson. We taught the restoration and the spirit was SO strong. It really helped her a lot and we invited her to be baptized and she said she didn't want to set a specific date, but that she would pray about a date. She also said she would pray to know if the church is true and pray for the strength to act on her answer. She is worried about quitting drinking coffee, so we helped her understand the the Lord will help her and give her the strength to do that and the getting baptized will help her even more with that. It was just a really great lesson. 

We also had a lesson with C who was out of town for like 2 months and then was busy so we haven't seen her for like 3 or more months, and we finally got to meet with her! We met at the church bc she likes to feel the spirit here, and we talked about faith and repentance. It was so good. We watch Brad Wilcox's talk- His Grace Is Sufficient, which first off is the best talk ever and if you haven't ever watched it then go watch it bc it's amazing. So yeah, and that helped her a lot. She always tells us she feels unworthy but won't open up more than that, and she opened up a lot more and expressed her desire to strengthen her faith so that was really good and she said that talk helped her a lot. So hopefully we can help her progress even more! 

Also we had to take our car to the shop on thursday to get a dent fixed so we didn't have the car on thursday so we had to walk to the church for our lesson with Carolyn, which it was a long walk, but hey. There are a ton of missionaries that never have a car, so I won't even complain. hahah, I definitely give them props for walking all the time. That would be hard. I am so blessed to have a car in this mission! 

But really this church is so true. You notice the biggest difference in the lives of those that live the gospel and in the lives of those that don't. And you can see the most amazing change when people start living the gospel either for the first time, or again when they are reactivated! It's wonderful. I know this church is true with all of my heart, and I am so thankful to be a missionary and to have the opportunity to help others find this happiness. I love this gospel. 

But anyways! I think that's all for this week. I love you all, and I cannot wait to skype next week!! Have a great week. (:
Love, Sister Killian 

Ok wait I forgot the funniest part of my week! We were tracting and we met this guy named Al. He was super willing to talk to us which was awesome but he was crazy! He told us that he was 'the big man's favorite' and that we would see him in heaven bc he would be God's chauffeur. bahah. He commended us for the work that we do. Oh and also, yeah he was creepy. He said something about having one girl and a bunch of boys in his family and I was like Hey, I'm the oldest of 3 boys! and he was like I bet you're the best looking of the bunch and I was like uhhh.... (what the heck do I say??) So I just laughed and was like I don't know! and he was like Oh, you are! And me and Sis Giff looked at eachother and were like uhh... EW! Yeah creep. So we shared some stuff about the gospel with him and gave him a pass a long card with our number and said to call if he wanted to learn more and then like an hour later he left us a message and he was like hey this is Al Hale! I just met the sister missionaries for the LDS church and I wanted to tell you how good they did so give me a call back! Well, we didn't want to call him back so we had the Elders call him for us. Bahahah, he told them we needed to get paid better and what a great job we did, which whatever, but it was funny. The Elders got a good laugh from it. hahah. Life as a missionary is the strangest. 

Also we had an appt yesterday with this super cool lady we met last week, I can't remember if I talked about her but her husband had just died like a year ago and they got married when he was in jail and all that crazy.  So anyways, we went to the appt with her and there was a bag on the door with a cute card in a cute envelope that said Mormon Ladies, we were like ughhhhh. The BOM was in the bag and she basically dropped us with a cute card. We left the BOM and a note that said she could keep it and we would try again another time.