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| When we saw a piece of sidewalk chalk on the ground at a members home we just had to leave a note :) |
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| We sticky-noted our ward mission leaders door! |
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| Another Florida Spider Specimen |
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| Rainbow |
I will be staying in Gainesville 3rd, but Sister Stitt is going to Orange Park 2nd ward. My companion will be Sister Martinez. I don't know her, but I am excited to meet her!
It was a great week! We set a baptism date with Sheree, but we will need to move it back to at least October so she can have time to begin living the word of wisdom and to come to church again. She is a sweetheart and she loves Jesus! Did I mention she was meeting with the Jehovah Witnesses? We knocked on her door for an appointment and out comes the JW's... Yah we were confused. I guess she has met with them for a long time. When she first met them she thought they were from our church! We clarified that one!
On Saturday we went with Sister Moffett to see Antoine again. Last week he and his friend, Jeff, just shot anti at us the whole time. We figured it would be the same, but we felt we needed to go one more time to give them the chance to have read the Book of Mormon sincerely. Brother Moffet didn't come this time. He knew that Antoine and Jeff just wanted to get him in a doctrine debate and his Irish blood wouldn't handle it very well. Sure enough they asked where Brother Moffett was! And sure enough the lesson went right back to them asking a ton of questions they must have gotten from their preacher or online somewhere. They just kept asking questions that were really not important (no offense, but some things just don't really matter). They had all these quotes and scriptures to use against us. We answered them patiently and finally I asked the question, "You've shared a lot of concerns you have about the Book of Mormon, but what have you read that you like or agree with?" Haha, Jeff opens up to a scripture in the back of the book (he said he read from the beginning and so there is no way he read clear to Moroni!) and shared a scripture he agreed with, but then he pulled out some crazy quote from the Journal of Discourses and shot it right down. It was ridiculous! Then they told us we should have Elders come answer their questions since, "They would know what they were talking about." About that point Sister Moffett stormed out and we tried to leave with a prayer. We never got to the prayer though because they wouldn't stop asking questions. They finally told us our souls were damned. That was definitely an experience for the missionary books! Haha, it was just so completely ridiculous! Why do people even want to work so hard to put down our beliefs? Oh, yah! Because it is truth and truth will always be opposed.
Nikita is doing so great! She was still really wanting to meet with us and she wanted to come to church again... and we hadn't even taught her any of the lessons! She is so prepared for the gospel! Before church on Sunday Sister Jepson came and we taught Nikita the Restoration. When we invited her to baptism she sat there for a moment thinking. She finally told us, "I'm scared of change, but I know he wants me to do it. I can just feel him pushing me. He won't make me do it, but I know he wants me to so I will!" She has a baptism date for September 28th!
I think that is a perfect description of how we feel when Heavenly Father pushes us from our comfort zone to a place that is better for us. An institute teacher once compared it to leaving the garden of Eden. We get so comfortable and we don't want to leave, but finally we know that if we want to keep growing the way God intended we have to walk into the unknown wilderness. The great thing is that I know He never leads us alone on that journey!
I love all y'all!
Sister Murray
P.S. Welcome home to all my Primary class
buddies! I can't believe you are all getting home from your missions! We will
definitely have to watch Prime the Pump when I get back! :)
P.P.S. The song of the week in this companionship is The Family is of God. We have been practicing one of the verses in Relief Society for the primary program and it is stuck in our heads every day! It is one of my new favorites!
