Coming Forth as Gold

Family!! Hello:)

This week has been incredible with a capital INCREDIBLE! Holy bananas. To be honest this week started out pretty rough. My companion and I weren't getting along. I was stressed beyond all belief. Our stupid Ipads are stupid! This was the first week my whole mission that I wished we could just go back to paper. We weekly planned for THREE HOURS. We had our entire week next week scheduled out. We had the lesson plans made. We had set all of our weekly goals. AND IT ERASED EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! ugh. It makes me angry just thinking about it.

But for those of you who have never served a mission, I'm going to let you in on a little secret.... Missions are hard. Really hard. There are nights when I crawl into bed at 930 and just cry. My prayers on those nights usually go a little like this, "Heavenly Father today was really hard. I don't really feel like talking about it. Goodnight." There are other days, when patience is running so low that I just have to lock myself in the closet and pray for charity and patience with others. There are days when nothing goes right and discouragement abounds and the only thing that will make it better is a big bowl of ice cream at the end of the night. Members are stubborn. Investigators are frustrating. And being with someone 24/7 tries your patience like nothing else. And a lot of the time, no one wants to listen to you.

But after one of those hard days that included all of the items mentioned above, in my studies Heavenly Father led me to this gem,

"But He knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as GOLD."

Job 23:10

And I realized, all that is happening is my loving Heavenly Father is making me into gold. Then I thought of a scripture that I found months ago and fell in love with:

Joshua 14:12 Therefore give me this mountain...

This statement of faith and trust spoken by an 85 year old Caleb to his faithful buddy Joshua has a pretty intense back story. This story begins forty years previous when the children of Israel were in search of the promised land. Ten scouts were sent out ahead of the rest of the group to check out this land that could quite possible be the promised land. They returned with an incredible report. The land was gorgeous, and full of fruit and animals and anything and everything that the children of Israel could need. One problem though... there are people living there already. And they are giants! Joshua and Caleb had faith and said, so what? "they are bread for us!" because they knew that God would provide a way. But the other eight said, no way, jose. And the children of Israel chose to listen to the faithless eight. As a result they were all cursed to wander for 40 years in the wilderness... Fast forward to this conversation with Caleb and Joshua. Like I said, Caleb is now 85 years old and God has commanded them to go and take the land from the giants.

And he says: I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now... Therefore give me this mountain... If it so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said.

He's right, If the Lord is with us, we can do anything.

So I took that to heart this week. And the miracles came pouring down...

We taught 21 lessons this week! For the past eight weeks, we have taught maybe ten on a good week.

We found 11 new investigators. Four of those eleven are now progressing! And one has a baptism date for December 14th.

The biggest miracle of all this week was K.

We were on our way to see one of our investigators and somehow ended up being 45 minutes early... we must have been booking it on our bikes! So we locked up our bikes and started walking around the neighborhood. We talked to a drunk man, four guys who were quite possibly in the middle of something illegal... and a man who was convinced we were Jehovahs Witnesses despite our efforts to convince him otherwise. It was just about time to head over to our lesson when we saw a man and woman sitting in their garage smoking and chatting with each other. We went up and started talking to them. She was a talker! The whole time she was talking, I was saying a little prayer asking Heavenly Father to help me know what to say, but nothing was coming to me! I was like, come on, don't leave me hanging here... Still nothing. I finally came to the conclusion that maybe we just weren't supposed to talk to these people at this time, but something in me wouldn't let me leave. Time to be at our other lesson came, and we were just about to leave with this lady's 19 year old daughter walks out of the house and joins the conversation. Her mom mentioned how this girl likes checking out different churches and is trying to find which one is right for her. I jumped all over that and asked if she wanted to come to church with us tomorrow! Her mother, who previously hadn't let us get a word in edgewise, asked us what church it was. We told her and she said she has some problems with the Latter-day Saints... my heart sank:( But to our surprise she turned to her daughter and said, but I will support you if you want to go check it out. What?! YAY!

So Sunday rolls around and we walk out of our intense ward council that had gone twenty minutes past time to finish, and there's K sitting on the couch with one of our ward missionaries. Come to find out this wonderful ward missionary had already taken K on a tour of the church, told her about our meetings and showed her where to go! Through sacrament meeting she was very quiet, and you couldn't tell by the look on her face if she was enjoying it or if she thought we were crazy. We take her to Sunday School, drop her off and proceed to seek referrals from members out in the halls. After Sunday School, which by the way, the lesson was on the Law of Chasity... AHHHH!!! We go to check on K to make sure she hadn't high-tailed it the heck out of there. She was still there just smiling away. When she saw us she was like, "Oh hey, I have a question for you guys!" Oh no... "How do I become a member of this church?" ... Say what? I must be dreaming. Someone pinch me. But I kept my cool, and explained baptism and how as missionaries we help people prepare to be baptized and asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She said she did and that she had never felt this way before in her life, not to mention the fact that she had never stayed awake through church before. But she just felt full of light and hungry for more knowledge.

So after church her parents come to pick her up and she asks us to come out to the car with her to tell her parents that she wants to be baptized... my heart was racing. So she went out and said, "Can Sister Rowland and Sister Johnson come over later today?" her mom asked why. And this courageous little soul said, "I have never felt this way in my whole life, and I want to become a part of this church. They are going to help me to be baptized." The spirit must have been working over time on her mother because she agreed and said we could come over at 430.

430 rolls around and as we pull up to K's house, there she is in her garage just smiling from ear to ear and literally glowing! We taught the Restoration, and her mom actually stayed out and listened! And we committed her to be baptized on December 14. When we asked her if she had any questions she said only one. And she asked us what she needed to do to be ready for her baptism. Before we left, she explained how she had been praying to find a church, and she knows that us showing up at her house was an answer to that prayer. She said she was so happy that we were in her life and that we were showing her the way to Jesus.

Along with her, we also had three other investigators at church. They all had a great time! Despite the lesson on the Law of Chastity, they all agreed to meet with us this week and come to church next week!

I know that Heavenly Father and Christ are right next to me in this work, and knowing that, I can say with faith and trust "When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as GOLD. Therefore give me this mountain!" And I know that you can learn that for yourselves as well.

I love you all, Happy Thanksgiving!

Love always, Sister Rowland