Dear Family and Friends,
I am going to send a little mini-diary of the things I did each day. That might help my e-mails make more sense. How about the beginning... a very good place to start....
Last Tuesday, 14 august
We had this thing called "Mission Tour" (or "Tour de Mission," as they say in Europe). They brought in a church leader of a general area (called a "seventy") who specifically works with missionaries a lot, Elder Marcus Aidukaitis (from Brazil). He gave us lots of advice on how to plan -- as missionaries, we always talk about "miracles" and "faith," but we always need help in doing the footwork and planning, as well as the praying and fasting, to facilitate these miracles. I took several things from Ye Ole Mission Tour: (1) don't get dehydrated. I was super dehydrated during the meeting and so cranky for the first part. Not good for a missionary, or anyone. So drink water! (2) We are able to be diligent only if we have faith. If we have no vision in mind, then there's no real motivation to stick anything out, easy or hard. We have to have faith in whatever we are doing (missionary work, finishing a degree, seeing a goal through) and from that we can be persistent, dogged hard workers. If anyone wonders why I'll stubbornly see something to the end, it's because I have faith in it. Yep, that's the secret. Lots of other great things too. Write to me and I'll share one.
Wed, 15 august
I had to start saying goodbye to some of the people here that I knew I wouldn't see after this week. When that happened, I realized "Waaaah, I LIKE these people." I really want to stay in contact, especially those who I've seen progress so much in the past six weeks. For example, our dear Brooklynite (who calls the Book of Mormon "da Book"), was preparing to get baptized. He had already missed one baptismal date due to family concerns, but we had worked with him and rescheduled another. I had just figured, "Airight, we'll just work with him for a week or two until he gets baptized, and then he can start progressing." But NOOO. We were able to teach small lessons that have made such a huge difference. For example, we taught him to pray and ask God for specific things instead of just saying, "Please bless everyone." And every day after that, he would see us and tell us, "You won't believe it! I asked God for xxxxxxx and right after my prayer, the phone rang about just that!!!" That happened several times over the week. Even though he was baptized on Saturday (uh oh, getting ahead of my diary thing...), seeing these moments was actually more special to me. It showed me that he has real and lasting faith in what he is doing. And that is more valuable than be baptized (or as he calls it, "swimmin' without the floaties").
Sat, 18 august
Okay, I'm not very good at this diary thing, so I'm going to skip to Saturday. Not only did we have our AWESOME baptism in the morning (lots of church members came and so did the new convert's older daughter), but had a great lesson in the evening. We met with Dennis, an author, poet, biophysicist, and single father of 8 (children now grown and since remarried). He is SMART and that is FUN to talk with. Why? Well, sure, our "getting to know you" time is enlightening for me. But when we teach, we cannot rely AT ALL on any argument (true ones or false ones) about how our church is true or that Joseph Smith is a prophet. Because he can easily deconstruct any argument. The solution? We do what you do with every investigator -- you teach them what you know, you let THEM pray about it, and then let them receive a confirmation from God that it is true. No convincing or anythin'. Just simply teach and have faith--faith, faith, faith--that they'll get their answer.
We posed it to Dennis as the scientific method -- we have a hypothesis, based on our own personal reserach, that our church is true. So we are asking him to experiment. We are asking him to take the discussions, to read the Book of Mormon, and to pray. Then he will analyze. What answers does he get? What are the fruits of his labors? etc. etc. And then he will make a theory: either it's true or it isn't. From there, he will continue to work on that theory, or as well call it in the church, a testimony.
I'm super bummed that I can't continue to teach Dennis, among many others, but I will write him (and if he is reading this, I am eagerly awaiting to hear about your progress).
Sun, august 19
HERE WE GO! So because of all the crazy companion changes, we are actually short on sisters in the Arizona mission. That means, this upcoming transfer, I'm leaving for Italy and my companion S. Taylor is going back to Mesa. In our place, they are sending to completely new missionaries. This doesn't happen very often, because it makes it hard to keep up continuity in the area. They'll send in two completely new missionaries who have no preconceived ideas about the people in the area. This is called whitewashing. Now, as we know, whitewashing is not as much fun of an activity as Tom Sawyer makes it out to seem. The new missionaries have to rely soley on notes we give them and have been attempting to record over our time here. So we've been scrambling to do that and it is EXCITING and STRESSFUL. The other crazy thing is that it's elders (male missionaries) coming to this area. Which they haven't had for at least 6 years. But one is apparently from Japan, so I'm leaving lots of Japanese messages around the apartment. I really hope I wasn't told wrong and that he's actually from Korea....
Alright kids! I leave tomorrow to fly out to Rome, Italy to start my second mission. So wait for that! And I have one last thing to share... it being an AWESOME scripture that my old Canadian companion found for me.
"So as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also."
(Romans 1:15)
Set cruise control for Italy! :)
Love
sister fuller
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