Prayers are Answered! | November 6, 2017
Bon dia mi famia! Con bai? I hope you are all doing wonderful! I love you so much!
This week was amazing! We had some really amazing spiritual experiences and lessons. One thing in particular is that Sister Hardy and I had been praying to be able to get some investigators on baptismal date. We had 3 before but sadly had to drop them all or at least take them off date because they weren't progressing. So we were back to 0 dates and decided to pray every day that we could find the elect, those who are ready to accept the gospel and be baptized. I shared this experience with President Egbert too:
We had some really amazing lessons this past week with our investigators. The most exciting thing to report is that we now have 4 investigators on baptismal date! It's 2 families too! The first couple is David and Melissa. We were able to meet with both of them a lot this week (usually we can only see David because Melissa is really busy with work), so Melissa is now at the same point as David in the lessons. When we taught her about the Book of Mormon, she was really interested in it and I think David's excitement about it has really impacted her to feel the same way. Before, Sister Hardy and I weren't sure if Melissa had the same amount of interest as David, but after that lesson, we both agreed that she did. Yesterday, we had the Atonement of Jesus Christ lesson with here and it was amazing. She told us that she has never really been interested in praying or going to church. She would go to a Catholic church just for her kids, but she said she didn't really like it because she didn't understand it. But she said for the past couple weeks (since we have been coming), she has felt a greater desire to come closer to Heavenly Father. She said that when she's alone, she finds herself talking to Him and telling Him all that is happening in her life! She and David also said that it was hard for them to understand the Book of Mormon at first, but they kept reading because they had faith, and now they are understanding it more and really remembering the things they read! We extended the baptismal invitation to Melissa and she readily accepted. We are planning for both David and Melissa to be baptized on December 2! The other couple we have on date is Roshen and Nelson, an Aruban couple. Sister Hardy and I weren't sure if they were truly interested and progressing, so in our lesson with them last Monday, we decided it was going to be a finding lesson, and if they hadn't kept their commitments we had given them, we would drop them. We found out in the lesson that they had read from the Book of Mormon and prayed as we had asked them. We asked if they received an answer and they said no, but they felt in their hearts that it was true. This was great to hear, we just had to help them understand that this feeling was their answer. After reading scriptures and discussing how the Spirit works, they understood that they had received their answer that the Book of Mormon is true and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the Lord's church on the earth. Roshen said that she wants to be a part of Christ's true church so she can be prepared for His Second Coming. They accepted baptismal dates for December 16!
This truly was an answer to our prayers. I know that the Lord blessed us and guided us by the Spirit to be able to know what to say to these investigators so that they could feel the Spirit and the truth of this message and accept the invitation to be baptized! We are so excited for these families and the progress they are making.
This week went by so fast! Last night, Sister Hardy and I were talking about we couldn't believe that it was already Sunday! The week goes really fast when really great things happen like that :)
We always email in the morning, so we haven't done our P-day things yet, but today we are thinking about going down to the cruise ship port and getting pastechis (the food that's similar to empanadas)! I'll take lots of pictures for next week!
1. What is it about contacting that you like so much?
I love being able to meet so many new people! Especially on the islands, where there are people from all over the world (Haiti, the Netherlands, USA, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Nigeria, etc), we get to talk with so many amazing people and find out about their families and what brought them to Aruba. The area where we are contacting right now is also really awesome because so many people are accepting and ready to hear our message! This past week we had a day where we contacted for about 3 hours and made 14 contacts! That's a really good number for us, especially for that amount of time. It's hard to contact when no one wants to listen and when it's really hot out, but then we'll meet someone who wants to listen and is really nice and it makes it all worth it! (The best is when they let you come in and give you juice and we get to teach an unplanned lesson :))
2. Do you mostly bike or walk in this area?
We bike everywhere. The only time we walk is when we contact. We ride our bikes to our contact area and then lock our bikes up to a pole and walk from house to house.
3. What's a typical weekday schedule for you (not p-day)?
6:30-8:20- wake up, work out, get ready, eat breakfast
8:20-8:50- planning for the day, when we plan our lessons and what we're going to teach
8:50-9:50- personal study
10:00- out the door and either to an appointment or contacting (President likes us to be out by 10)
12:00-3:00- back home for lunch, companion study, language, training
3:00-6:00ish- more lessons or contacting
6:00-7:00- dinner and training
7:00-9:00ish- lessons
9:00ish-10:00- back home, write in the area book about the lessons we had that day, briefly go over what we're teaching in lessons for the next day
10:00-10:30- relax, get ready for bed
4. Are you "in training" for 12 weeks? What changes after the training period?\
Yes, training is a 12 week program. Nothing much really changes after that period except that we don't have to spend 30 minutes each day doing training. During this time, we do different activities (it's all in a little booklet, what we need to do for training) such as watching the District, reading Preach My Gospel, doing role-plays, and discussing different things that missionaries have to adjust to (teaching lessons, extending commitments, etc).
Thank you all for your amazing emails, I love hearing from you! I think about you every day and pray for you each!
Love you TONS!
Love,
Sister Davidson
P.S. I gave Lauren our address for letters. I hope she can give it all to you and anyone else who wants to send letters. I'd love to get some!
This Saturday was the international service day! Did you participate? In Aruba, the 2 branches met up to do a street/beach clean up. We met in a really touristy area close to the beach next to this cool sign :)
A dog that kept following us while we were contacting
The street we ride up on the way to our contact area
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