I hope this week strengthens you as much as it strengthened me. A little bit crazy, so hold on, but it was a lot of fun with so many lessons learned. We were trying to decide where to go this week and decided to go tracting out in the boonies, way out there on 180th and beyond. We started driving the 45 minutes it would take to get out there and had the craziest experiences of our lives. We met the most amazing people, the crazy weird people, the drunk Oakies, the no trespassing signs with guns, and the sketch trailers that are vacant…but not…and all the other craziness out there, it was the most rewarding and I want to go back! I loved the Boonies. They’re so humble out there. We decided to tract a trailer park in the middle of nowhere on 120th and started knocking some trailer doors, met some cool people. Some people we probably won’t go back cuz they were a little bit weird. Long story made short, we went to a member’s home and she said we can’t go there any more. It’s not the best place to go. Not the best people live there, so if we are teaching someone from there they have to be met somewhere else. She warned us, told us the situation, well we had already scheduled a lesson with one of the investigators so we said a prayer knowing that Heavenly Father would tell us to get out of this situation if we needed to and went back on Friday with one of the members. When we knocked on the door she wasn’t even there, but the real lesson to that story is that we tried it and we felt peace. It’s a testimony to us that Heavenly Father is looking out for us even if it is in the sketchiest situation. He is there watching and protecting us and we needed to go there, and if we would have felt strongly about leaving, we would have left. So, I am so grateful for the Spirit.
A miracle out of that tracting experience . . . we went to go see a member of our ward who hadn’t been to church for a while. When we knocked on the door we asked for Sister Poole and they said no one by that name lived there so we met Brandy instead and she was actually super interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ. She’s so nice, has 2 kids, and that’s who we were going to see Friday. Unfortunately, it fell through but hopefully we are going to be able to visit them again, preferably at a member’s home for the visit. I’ll let you know how that one goes.
Some of our investigators keep getting the flu, it goes away and then comes back again. It is the worst thing ever. So,we’ve been meeting with our investigator, Marilyn, a lot, and she is doing so good. She’s finally decided and made the step to move forward and get baptized. We are so proud of her and so excited. I wish you could have been in on that lesson because she was beaming. We don’t have a date set yet but that will soon happen after we work out some little details. She is so ready, so prepared. She came to a baptism the other day and told us that is how she wants to feel one day. She was so excited!
The other day I was studying in Alma. Our mission president had given us the challenge to read Alma 1-42 then be prepared to give a 7 minute talk for Zone Conference about what the Spirit teaches us as we read these verses in Alma. As I was reading, this impression came to me that there is opposition in all things, and it can be overcome with the gospel of Jesus Christ, faith in Jesus Christ, and the atonement of Jesus Christ. I have a firm testimony that the Lord allows things to happen for a reason and puts things in your path so that you are prepared for something that’s coming up.
Well, tonight we had a pretty tough experience. Someone called us that we love dearly and ripped on the Church and it was the hardest 45 minutes of our lives because we listened to them just talk horribly. We were about ready to snap and tell them that they were hurting us. They needed to consider that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and remember that they’ve felt that it’s true, and that they know that everything we’ve taught them is true. We had to show a lot of patience and a lot of love towards them and just let them talk. They were going through a lot and this was probably them getting it out. It was tough to hear and we spent the majority of that phone call crying. It was really sad for us and it was hard. It tried our faith a little bit but it was also a testimony builder that we know everything will work out. I’m grateful that my testimony is strong and I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true. We needed to have that experience because that was the opposition, “there is opposition in all things.” Satan is trying to pull this person down and they don’t understand that it’s Satan.
So this “opposition” allowed us to help an investigator of the Elders in Norman. We had just had the conversation with the person on the phone and were bawling. After we calmed down and talked it through and said a prayer, the Elder’s investigator called and told us her family is being hard on her for going to church and reading the Book of Mormon. She recognizes that it makes her feel happy and she loves reading the Book of Mormon and doing all these things, but when people reject her it hurts. We were able to talk with her, share a scripture and help bring comfort to her. It was this hard experience that helped us know what to say to her. It is my testimony that the Lord gives us hard experiences,so we can be better prepared for the future. That was a pretty cool experience and I’ll never forget this week. I think I’ve grown so much more over the last week and I’m so grateful for the experiences I’ve had, even though they were tough and I fell short, but I was able to get back up with the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is an ongoing process, it doesn’t stop. We have to be continually repenting and going to the Lord because no one on this earth is perfect no matter what religion you are, background you’ve had, your nationality, etc. Everyone has flaws. Everyone has the chance to get back up again. That’s why God sent His son to earth to die for us, to suffer for our sins. He knows what it feels like when we fall short and we need to get back up. He descended below all things so that He can help bring us back up. He didn’t just reach his hand out, He went into the darkness with us so that He can help us step by step climb up and get out of that darkness. That analogy has always stuck with me. I love that analogy and I’m so grateful I can turn to my Savior.
Your Challenge: Don’t fear that which is good. It may look scary but always know that God has your back and that if it’s a bad situation, He’s going to get you out of it. So don’t fear experiences (oppositions), He is trying to help you become better, because God will help you out of the situation. This can apply to all situations. This week it applied to us in the Boonies, it might have looked sketchy on the outside but on the inside there were many amazing, genuine, prepared people that we were able to meet. Have a wonderful week!
Love, Sister Sarah Walker
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