Today I was so excited to tell you about the wonderful miracles that happened this week. But first I want to pay tribute to Aunt Carol ( Sister Burnham's Great Aunt Carol passed away last Tuesday)
and share some memories I have of the Barnes family. There are not many but few that really have made a difference.
1) Uncle Jim dancing with me at Jenni's Wedding
2) Aunt Carol's voice sounding like grandma's
3) The house and spending lots of time upstairs
4) Preparing food in the kitchen, fruit pizza, olives, snacks. It seemed to be on Sundays!
5) I am sure they came to a dance performance or two.
6) How pretty she was in her dress at her daughters weddings.
These are just some I have remembered. It was wonderful to learn from their testimony.
This week we had found 4 new investigators. Tom, Shirley, Jerry, and Mark are all so different. My absolute favorite this week was how we had a goal to find three. My faith has grown to see how none of this was done by our own doing. God absolutely put them in our path. It is so cool to have seen this week take shape. Heather is on date to be baptized on Jan 28th. Wyatt is FINALLY getting baptized on the 22nd. His Mom has been planning it since yesterday. I hope and pray God will strengthen them these next few weeks.
I learned how grateful I am for the Church website. Heather has been progressing so much because of the movies and conference talks on the cites. She has started to, study, journal and I am praying that she comes to church these next few weeks.
Sister Bishop and I have been studying why we invite people to be baptized the first visit. We are still trying to rap our heads around it. I thought I knew why, but if I really did, I would be acting on it. So what I feel I need to do is act on faith and listen to the spirit and always be prepared to invite them, just in case the spirit dips his bucket in my spiritual well and wants to use me in that way.
This all started after we taught Mark with a member present, and it went well. Which means, we left him to expect more and the spirit was there. But we were thinking about why we didn't invite him to be baptized. We team taught the lesson better than we ever had in past lessons. We nailed the inspired questions and helped him understand the need for a prophet. It was cool to see him nod his head like missionaries do when they want to show interest even though they don't exactly know what you are saying. Missionaries think if you are nodding your head they won't be asked questions. Nodding your head is a definition of participation to a missionary. (Sister Burnham's theory)
We are trying to find out how to best be prepared each lesson to invite someone to be baptized and what the signs are from the spirit that we can look for to feel more confident in inviting them.
We also met with Tom. A Simple miracle was that after dinner at a members home the lesson they were coming to canceled. Sister Bishop thought of Tom and we decided he was the best back up plan. HE TOTALLY LOVED THE MEMBERS AND TOTALLY LIKES WHAT WE ARE TEACHING! He is vegan. No animals! He only has lots of wild deer roaming his property and 69 turkeys in nests in trees. Is is so passionate about them that he so prepared for the millennium its not even funny. I am so excited for him to see his potential as a Priesthood holder and a loving teacher of the Restored Gospel! He is so Awesome.
Sunday we had church and a baptism afterwards. pat and Wyatt attended and that's when Wyatt committed to being baptized.
By the way we have an amazing ward mission leader and his wife. They gave us a portable heater for us to borrow, because our heating is not yet fixed until today or tomorrow. It went from 64 to 70 very nicely. I am grateful for their charity!
I love this next week. We are trying our hardest to get members more involved. We are learning that Jesus Christ is so much helping inspire us and strengthens our faith in him each day.
Finish Strong!
Love,
Sister Burnham
No comments:
Post a Comment