Advice of the week: the conference center roof gets windy so don't wear a full skirt there; it might fly up to China and make old men feel uncomfortable. Just a thought.
I love life in west gate with Sister Mitchell. We don't get a ton of square teaching time but this week we have a few lessons with Elders from surrounding missions who bring their investigators. We learned a heck of a lot with our good friend Chance yesterday. Usually when other Utah missionaries come to Temple Square, they schedule it ahead of time so that we can all prepare to make it awesome. Yesterday 2 Ogden Elders came in, unannounced, with their investigator, Chance. They were pushing him in his wheelchair and it was clear that he had many physical and social disabilities. The Elders were mostly mute when we started so we just ran with it and started to teach Chance. We brought him to the temple model and through teaching, we found out that he had a baptism date set for this month. Awesome. The elders could have told us that earlier but hey, no one's perfect. Chance got super emotional when we started to teach about temple sealings so after that we brought him to watch some kid videos to lighten the mood. We had a good 'ole time taking him through a regular temple square routine. I asked him what he does now since he graduated from high school last year and he told us that he was working on maintaining his independance. The men laughed. So the elder whispered to fill me in on the fact that Chance is homeless. Ahhhhh. The world makes sense again. It's obvious that Chance is very intelligent but has a load of things going against him to find a job and such. We took him to see the little display of welfare square and the humanitarian center. We showed him how far the generosity of the members of the Church really goes. Sister Mitchell told a semi-long story about how fast offereing money went to save starving children in Ethipia. It was a neat story but the rest of us were kind of dyingly bored. Then we turned it back and talked about the kindess of Christ and the things Chance does to serve. It was obvious that Chance had many needs. I realized during the tour that he needed something from temple square but it didn't have anything to do with starving children in Ethipoia. We swung around the south VC basement like we're used to and then went up to the statue of Christ. I felt so inspired there. We taught him about how large the world/galaxy is and even though we are tiny, God and Jesus Christ care about each of us (kind of stolen from Pres. Uchtdorf). Not only that, but we went into detail about how God cares about every aspect of Chance's life. The Spirit was so strong. I couldn't have planned out what to say but I knew that because we were listening to what he said (even though he rambled on like a little Matthew), the Spirit was working through sister Mitchell and I. We learned so much with Chance. We learned to stop treating every visitor the same. Sure, you can teach about prophets in the tabernacle but is that what they need? Or we can show a video clip of Mormon's words to pray about the Book of Mormon but chance didn't need that. It drive me nuts when I hear sisters repeating the same lines to all of their guests. Everyone needs something and it's our job to find it on Temple Square. It's harder I think when we get non-talkers on a tour but I know that we can work miracles with them too.
That's my story of the week. There were plenty more but that one happened yesterday so it's fresh in my mind. I'm getting more confident in my french and my mandarin since there are a ton of both almost everyday.
NIHOWWWWWW
-Sister Katie
Me and my cousin (Sam's cousin)
Me and my EX
A rainy day
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