Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission // April 2014-October 2015

Monday, September 28, 2015

Week 78




This week was definitely a trying week. We knocked more and worked harder than I ever have on my mission and yet we did not find any elect people to teach. I'm grateful for the experience, however, because it helped us stay humble and fall to our knees more. God blessed us with a miracle while I was on an exchange with Sister Tui. We were knocking doors and it was getting really dark, but we felt like we needed to keep knocking. We met a Haitian woman who invited us in to say a prayer with her and her daughter. During the prayer her mother came into the room and afterwards asked if we were Mormon. We told her yes and she told us that she had been baptized down in Miami years ago. She didn't speak any English, but we ended up teaching the Restoration to her daughter and granddaughter. They took a Book of Mormon and promised to read and pray.

While reading in Helaman I found comfort in the experience that Nephi had while preaching the gospel. After Nephi prophesies about the chief judge being murdered and the people believe him to be a prophet. He's about to return home when God commands him to return and declare repentance he obeys and sees no success. He preaches to every multitude and they continue to reject him, however, as he stayed faithful he was blessed with power and authority.

Sometimes we will not see the immediate fruits of our efforts, perhaps they won't even be the desired blessings, but God knows best what experiences we need to help us grow and will bless us eventually depending on our faithfulness.

Here's a quote to ponder...
"A mission has shaped, and formed, and fashioned, and underscored everything that has happened to me since that hour...We simply ask them to put everything on hold: put education, put professional opportunities, put marriage, put whatever for 18 months to two years, and go voluntarily, and pay your own way, and have the experience of a lifetime. Ostensibly, theoretically, and truthfully, it is for the church, it is service to the kingdom and religious principles, to spread Christianity, and I would include and encourage everyone to go, and if not a single solitary person joined the church. If not one joined the church, I would still say do it, simply because of what it meant to me. They're supposed to go give service; they're supposed to go love people where they are. If they join the church, fine, but if they don't, fine. If they can do anything, anything they can do, any single solitary Christian decent worthy thing they can do, they are supposed to go do. And if people join the church, great! And if they don't, missionaries have left a nation, community, or a family, or a person….better than they had found them! And that is” our call”, as a Missionary!" (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland)

Sincerely, Sister Matheson
Pics:
Sorry for the shortage of pictures. Nothing super eventful happened. 




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