This has been the longest week- it feels like it's been a whole month.
So much has happened. A lot of tracting, but we did get some return
appointments with some referrals and potentials that we visited! We're
excited to teach more. We had our zone conference on Tuesday- it was
incredible (and an hour away so it used up a lot of our miles for the
month...). We had a few different speakers and breakout sessions, and
we went through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so faith, repentance,
baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the
end. Sister Taylor talked about faith. She asked us why God didn't
remove Daniel from the lion's den. Then she said it was to show him
and us that it's better for God to save us in our difficulties than to
save us from our difficulties. Daniel should have been eaten alive,
but God held the lions back, and He can hold back our personal lions
as well if we have faith in Him.
Then the APs talked about baptism and
confirmation and how important they are. Being baptized and confirmed
by the proper authority is essential to our salvation. Without it, we
cannot progress very far. In 3 Nephi 11 when Christ visits the
Americas, the first thing he talks about with them is baptism. After
all His sufferings and all He endured, baptism is what He taught
first- it was the most important thing He could teach the Nephites.
President Taylor concluded the conference with repentance. He talked
about it as a lifelong process, and how we have the wrong idea about
it sometimes. We sometimes think that repentance is a bad thing, but
it's not. It's how we grow, and it is so wonderful and so hopeful for
us. He talked about the Greek word "metanoeo" where "meta" is change
and "noeo" is either mind, knowledge, or breath. So to repent is a
change of mind and of knowledge. He also talked about a cool phrase,
"normalization of deviance." He talked about the Challenger expedition
and about how the problem was caused because of something they'd
ignored. They had these O- rings that sealed off the fuel from the
rockets, but whenever they recovered shuttles, these O-rings were
burnt (not burnt through, just burnt). They tried to fix it for a long
time, but finally they just decided that this burning of the rings was
normal, and fine because nothing bad had happened. Well, with the
Challenger, these O-rings burnt through and the ship exploded. It was
because of this "normalization of deviance" - because nothing bad had
happened yet, they just decided it was normal, but it caused a
tragedy. Sin is like this, and we have to be so careful. That's how
Satan gets us. He makes sin look enticing, like nothing bad has ever
happened because of doing this one thing. It's like boiling a frog.
But we have the Atonement and repentance, and that gives me a lot of
hope. Even when I mess up, that doesn't mean I'm lost forever. I can
change and leave that mistake behind. He said to us "you are doing
better than you think." That's true of everyone- I think we are all a
lot of the time doing better than we think we are.
On Wednesday, we had a really cool District moment. For training, we'd
watched this video from The District, where the elders started talking
to some maintenance guys and ended up getting a return appointment
with them. Then that day when we were headed home from lunch, we
spotted the landscaping guys also talking lunch, and we just thought
"why not?" So we started talking to them. Long story short, we gave
two of them Spanish Book of Mormons, and we got the information for
one of them!
We had a few other tiny miracles this week, where because we stayed
somewhere for a few more minutes instead of rushing off, we got to
talk to someone we hadn't seen in a while. That happened twice this
week, and the first time, we also found someone who cuts hair! Sister
Girot has been wanting a haircut, so that was a blessing. We also met
with some new move-ins, the Zabriskies, and Sister Zabriskie said she
would love to come out with us during the day! That was also an
incredible blessing. We don't have enough sisters who can go out with
us during the day.
We also put two people on date! One of them, his family has been
wanting him to get baptized, but they hadn't committed to a date yet,
and the lessons were going slower than they liked. So we set a goal to
work towards and he's going to be baptized on September 26! The other
one is a new investigator of ours. He's the one with the banana boxes
that I mentioned last week. He actually asked for help with starting
to clean them out and organize them. It's been pretty cool.
On Friday, we had a zone comp study and we went over chapter 9 of PMG.
That was cool, to hear what everyone took from it and thought about
it. And they gave us cheesecake afterwards.
Beyond that, it's been a lot of knocking doors. We've asked people for
referrals, and the Zabriskies gave us some but none are in our area!
And we went street contacting, and found someone interested- also in
another ward. But we've got a pretty large teaching pool still, and
we've just got to keep going! It's been pretty great. It isn't easy,
that's for sure, and it's emotionally draining, but it's worth it. We
are building firm foundations of faith for ourselves, and helping
others begin to build their own. And we eat some fabulous food.
I hope you all have a wonderful week! You are all in my prayers.
Stay strong!
Sister Jacobs
PS I want to see what you guys are up to as well!
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