Week #20: Then Cometh the Blessings

Hello! And Merry Christmas!

This week has been pretty spectacular! We've seen all the blessings
just come in a flood (along with some literal flooding- luckily
nowhere near us) and we've been able to just have a lot of fun! We
have also had a lot of meetings- a trainer/trainee meeting on Tuesday
(President Anderson gave me a yellow motorcycle) and zone conference
in Gresham on Wednesday which was amazing! It's been a pretty crazy
week.


First story- A few weeks ago, Sister Slattery and I met this really
nice lady, Felicia. She was busy right then but had said we could drop
by again in the afternoon sometime. Well we went back this week and
she meant It!! She invited us in and we had an awesome conversation
with her and she promised to read the Book of Mormon and invited us
back tomorrow, even though it's nearly Christmas! It was pretty
amazing. Hopefully her family will be on board as well.

Second story- we were out and had about an hour left before we headed
home, and we weren't sure where to go. So we prayed and we walked down
a street and we turned around to walk back and go a different
direction, and I saw this door. It was just a little thought, just
that it looked welcoming, so we went and knocked on it. An older woman
opened the door and she just was so excited because she'd prayed less
than 48 hours ago for sisters to come and here we were! Her name is
Leva. She thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses at first, but she was no
less excited when we explained who we really were. Her son has been
going through a hard time and he's married with two sons of his own,
and so she wants to be grounded and for him to be grounded too. Her
son Adam actually got home while we were there, just after that, and
we had an awesome conversation with him. He asked us a lot of
questions and we answered them and we told him about the First Vision
and the Book of Mormon and we left them a copy! They know the Bible
pretty well, and said the First Vision made sense. Adam promised to
read it before we come back (after Christmas). It was really amazing.

Oh and that was the night we almost crashed a wedding too! Sister Reed
is now Sister Judd and we had gone by to see if maybe they needed help
cleaning up (Brother Judd's daughter was in charge of everything and
seemed kind of frazzled on Sunday) and we walked up and towards the
gym. There was a camera flashing so we quieted down and I peeked
around the door. Then I turned to Sister Heath with wide eyes and
mouthed, "She's walking down the aisle right now!" So we skedaddled.
Kimberly called us right after we left Adam's house and she did need
help, so we went and helped really quick before we had to go home.

Third story- Last night we were walking around and just tired out and
wet and freezing and we knocked into an older lady who let us in. So
we sat down and showed her the Christmas video, and asked if she went
to a church and she said "yeah, yours!" Turns out she was baptized in
Canada a long time ago and hasn't been in a long time, and now it
would probably be too hard physically. She was very nice and said we
could come back!




The funny part about all of these door knocking miracles is that zone
conference was entirely focused around working more with the members.
President Taylor actually read us off the statistics about how
efficient knocking is compared to members inviting their friends and
it is a huge difference- with knocking, it's about 1 in 30 interested
people who get baptized. With members, it's 1 in 7. That's pretty

crazy! So, the way I look at it, if the two of us can see miracles while knocking a lot of doors (around ten before each story, on average) think about the miracles we could see from others just reaching out to their friends! This ward has seen it- two of the convert baptisms this year (about half) came from one family inviting some very close friends to activities and then inviting them to learn more. We as missionaries have a harder time talking to people because
we wear the name tag. And I know I would find it hard to trust or talk to anyone at my door with a name tag, sent by someone. But I trust my friends. That's something I've been learning more about. We also talked a lot about goals at our zone conference- setting them and keeping them visible. It's when we set goals and strive to achieve them that the Lord can trust us enough to lead us to those people He has prepared! And I am so grateful for the opportunity to teach. I
love the people here so much- this ward has been amazing. I'm excited to introduce others to the people here and help bring them in. It's been amazing.



Anyway, this week has been good. Very wet for sure! I think my bills
might be growing in. It's a lot of fun, being a trainer and getting to
work with someone new, who still has so much fire! It's helped get me
more excited. I'm looking forward to much awesomeness to come!

Love you all,
Sister Jacobs