Fwd: Stone Mountain, Families, and Fruit of Labors!

Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 3:35 PM

Subject: Stone Mountain, Families, and Fruit of Labors!
To: Lindy Taylor <lindyjtaylor@gmail.com>

Yall!!

Can I get an AMEN! I might could raise up outta here!

This has been the most fruitful week of my mission thus far. I especially feel so happy and privileged to be working with so many families to teach!! On Saturday alone we taught three families with members present. We're teaching two solid families, two more are slowly progressing, and we have return appointments with at least two more families this week. That's six families!!!! I've felt, while pondering our prosperous circumstances, awe for our incredible teaching pool, and a desire to maintain this momentum so the Lord can keep blessing us. I've been a little afraid that it won't last if I mess up. This morning I read Helaman 3:25-27:

"..So great was the prosperity of the church, and so may the blessings which were poured out upon the people that...[they]...were astonished beyond measure....the work of the Lord did prosper unto the baptizing..of..many souls, yea, even tens of thousands. Thus we may see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will...call upon his holy name."

That gave me comfort and taught me that we don't earn all the blessings God gives us. When we unite in His cause, and serve Him, He blesses us as abundantly as he pleases, as he did to the Nephites at that time. We've been praying and fasting oft (Helaman 3:35) for the families we're teaching, and as a result we are seeing the Lord work miracles in our work and in their lives. I'm so grateful for this incredibly fruitful time of my mission!

Jeff & Georgina are a couple we started teaching this week. Missionaries found them in February and they flaked out on their first appointment-- but we reconnected with them while going through our potentials records and they agreed to meet with us. He is Baptist, she is Catholic, and they have two young boys. It became clear that they both have questions about the Atonement and Plan of Salvation, and neither wholly agree with their own church's views. They kept their commitment from our first visit to watch an Atonement video online, and we committed them to read Alma 34 before we come again on Wednesday. Unless the Spirit directs otherwise, we'll invite them to be baptized this week. 

The Shaq's, as we've nicknamed them, are the large family we talked about last week. We're teaching five of them now-- a ten year old and four 17-20 year olds. They've kept commitments to read, meet with us almost every day, and are still progressing. They're incredibly prepared. Kedra highlighted verses and took notes in her Book of Mormon, the three boys read from the illustrated Book of Mormon to help understand the stories (they've read at least eight chapters so far!), and Amber has read some as well. They couldn't come to church this week because, guess why? They were just FEEDING THE HOMELESS. Kind of the best excuse I've ever been given for not coming to church. We brought it up last minute so we're going to push for next week. We're hoping to have them on date for baptism this week, and to prepare for later in August or early September.

After a week of no contact, we finally met with Keo, father of the Loatian family we're teaching. He was supposed to be baptized on July 26th, but lots of opposition came up. His former Christian church has been visiting him after five months of no contact, and he's felt very  confused. He said he just cannot figure out why he doesn't have peace. The other church doesn't give him peace; ignoring both us and the other church didn't bring him peace; so he told the other church not to come back and he's listening to us again. He was getting frustrated trying to explain this lack of peace in his life... "Something is..missing!" He said. As he said that, the Spirit strongly testified to me that I have what he is missing. I have the gospel of Jesus Christ. We read with him, prayed with him, and discussed his questions. He felt peace by the end of our visit. We also met his wife briefly, which we have unsuccessfully tried to do for two months! Their progress will be slower than we expected, but they're a solid, beautiful family and we're glad we still get to teach them. 

We hiked Stone Mountain today!! It was a fun, easy hike, and I'll send pictures as soon as I can. :) Some great members took us.

I feel strongly that there are more families for us to find, and your prayers would be much appreciated as we continue to seek them out and teach the ones we have.

Have a lovely week!

Sister Taylor