HEYYYYYYYYY.
I'm 99% sure that this is already my favorite transfer of my mission. I've been given just about every assignment at Temple Square to keep me busy for these last months. It's like they don't think I'm going to stay focused or something! My companion is the best. She's basically my new best friend but also my little minion. We're kind of the same person in a lot of ways so that makes life easy-breezy. My goal of this transfer is to help her love her mission. So far so good. The Temple Square lifestyle is really hard to get adjusted to and she's done really well so now we're learning to love it (more than how mush we love home.) Sister Takahashi's incredibly teachable so it's a nice, little boost to my self esteem. She's a sponge for knowledge and just tries to soak up everything I say or teach or do. This goes both ways though so I'm enjoying learning from her too. Mostly I feel bad that she can't come party with me and Sister Jardine in the mission afterlife this summer. We'll both be heart-broken when we have to break up in June. We love being Canadian together. The Canadian jokes just keep coming and they're mostly coming from us. We're changing the name of Guest Services to "The Canadian Embassy" during our hours there.
Serving at Guest services is nice change. The mission has been making a lot of changes as a whole so we, as the ears of Temple Square, have the job to implement most of those changes. So, when the SLC Elders call in saying that they're late to an appointment on the square or that they want to bring an investigator who they've never taught before, I get to give them a piece of my mind as well as the mission president's mind. I like my job.
Last week we got to cover Welfare Square for a day. I accepted it so that Sister Takahashi could experience another square and of course so that I could experience a lot of chocolate milk. While we waited for guests to come we enjoyed playing the- who do you know in Southern Alberta game. The game never stops. After a little wait, our new friend Daniel came in. It was obvious that Daniel was familiar with Welfare Square because he had been working there. He seemed odd and we weren't sure if we should give him a tour or not right away but we did. Since he already knew welfare square pretty well, we started our tour by telling him our secret. Us missionaries giving him a tour of WS was just an excuse to help him come closer to Christ. I basically told him that I get bored with facts and numbers so we'd try to help him with his testimony. The journey with him ended up being a really good one. It was apparent that he's had some addiction problems in the past/currently but he's on his way up. I think he's been trying to get clean on his own for a while but that's just not how it works. I'm not an addiction expert yet but we helped him to see that Jesus Christ helps during the repentance process, not just after. He's going to read his scriptures everyday this week and we'll check up on him soon through email. He told us that it wouldn't be a good idea to call him since he's low on meth. We're pretty sure he meant minutes.
My minion and I got to experience our first baby motor coach on Sunday. We took 8 English speakers on a tour while the rest of their huge group enjoyed the mandarin speaking sisters. Motor coaches are sweet because we get to declare the truthfulness of the restored gospel to a larger number of people but it's also a lot harder to teach it smoothly, with the Spirit, and have the guests trust us. Our international 8 were so cute. One Thai lady in our group couldn't speak English but she managed to tell me I'm beautiful. Precious. Even more precious, she left the circle of the group to get closer to the statue of Christ and and prayed at his feet. I think starting at the statue was a good thing for this group because they were all such good Christ-loving souls. We took them next to a good view of the temple and taught them about eternal families. We finished up at the pioneer monuments which was a success because there is so much power in telling those faith-building stories. We realized that we had some extra time so we sneaked into the Tabernacle and were lucky enough to hear and watch the choir/orchestra practice. The music brought the spirit so clearly to our little group. It was obvious that everyone was touched. Instead of having an awkward general invitation for these people to meet with missionaries in their local area, we managed to individually invite the people based on their personal needs. One old lady was crying in the tabernacle and said that music reminds her of her husband who passed away three years ago. It was so natural for me to invite her to learn more about the Temple because it is through the Temple that she can be secured to her husband for eternity. She replied by telling me that she had to go to the restroom. What the? Ghhhhh... old people... One of the couples in our group were Catholic/Hindu and they asked really good questions. My companion answered beautifully. They even asked why God killed the innocent crickets in the Pioneer story of the crickets/seagulls. I'm glad she answered that one.
Quick story. We had a tour with a Taiwanese man yesterday who didn't really know how to be a social being. We taught him pretty quickly about faith and how he can get personal answers from God. Then he asked us why our Church is different from other Christian Churches. We started to answer but then he told us that he didn't want to debate. He asked if he could leave us and tour himself around but I wasn't going to let him break up with us that easily. He had a question so we were going to answer him. We used the displays to teach him the restoration and then he asked us if he could get a Book of Mormon. Well, what do ya know. One minute he hates us, the next he needs us.
We took a fun lesson with some SLC elders and then we got to go to the investigators baptism! See pic.
No comments:
Post a Comment