March 24, 2014

Buenas tardes mi familia!

Wow so this week was sooo long haha but a good one at that!

So basically we had no solid investigators besides Nathan, and now that he is a member we are back to square one! Last week as we were doing weekly planning we knew that this week would be tough because we would be looking A LOT, but the Lord has truly blessed us so much.  So last Tuesday Sister Kreiberg and I had nothing to do, no one to see, and everyone who is anyone was busy, so we went and tracted for 6 hours straight and by the end of it I am pretty sure I wanted to cry because of how drained I felt. It is pretty hard to tract on the North side of Viera which is our area because everyone has a nice home and a job and not many people are home during the day expect for older retired people. But we were able to meet some very friendly people who allowed us to talk with them and pray with them so that made it all worth it. I don't think I could have handled anyone screaming at me that day. By the end of the day though Sister Kreiberg was ready to call it quits for sure. But surprising (but not really) the rest of the week wasn't too bad at all. When we got home Tuesday night before we did our planning for the next day we knelt down together to pray and plead with Heavenly Father that he would help us to accomplish all of our goals this week, and that we would be able to use our time productively and all I can say is that we were blessed so much. From about Wednesday on as we made calls to visit less active families in the ward a lot of them had free time open up to where we could share lessons.  When we went out to find we were able to teach many people on the doorstep and get return appointments and we placed 6 copies of the Book of Mormon this week, wow it was amazing for us. We also saw many great miracles as well. For one about 10 weeks ago Sister Kreiberg and I stopped a woman while we were biking and asked if we could come and visit her, well she gave us her number and as we called she had never really been available to meet with us, well this last week we went to go and visit a potential investigator that we had met at the park and the woman we had met many weeks ago (Margret) happened to be his neighbor. When we tracted into her door she seemed to be less busy and we were able to set up a return appointment with her and now we are going back again tomorrow to visit her. What was so cool though when we went to see her the first time is that she already had a copy of the Book of Mormon from 50 years ago. She and her husband moved and a really good friend of theirs gave it to them as a going away gift. On the inside the friend wrote, " This may seem a little odd as a going away gift, but I feel as though it is the most important thing I could ever give you. I hope you find the happiness and joy that I have found in this book." Margret's husband has died now but she kept it because she said is was so dear to him. We were able to teach her out of the copy when we saw her, it was very neat.  Then this week one of our potentials (Tommy) Margret's neighbor wasn't able to meet with us because he was going to go out of town with his family. Well this week as we were at the park to teach a less active who didn't happen to show up, Tommy and his family were there. He said that his trip had been canceled and so we were able to teach him and his wife at the park instead and set up another appointment to see them later this week, way cool. One last miracle, ok so... We received a referral from someone in the Viera 2nd ward (Mark) this week for a Chinese lady (Nancy) that came to church with him last Sunday, so we called this lady and of course we can barely understand each other, but we managed to get an appointment with her. Then when we went to visit her she wasn't home. K bummer.... then yesterday we had decided to go and try and see if she was home again and she was and right when she saw us she welcomed us in. We sat on the couch and she couldn't say more than two words to us, her son Alex who is 10 or 11 was translating for us, we were able to set up an appointment with her for tonight and a Chinese woman in our ward Sister Campbell is going to come with us. We are so excited.  This lesson is going to be way interesting because it's going to be all in Chinese, but I think it will go well especially because Sister Campbell is going to be there and they will be able to click real well. Wohoo! I will let you know how that goes next week! Sister Kreiberg and I were blessed so much for tracting for hours I think, we accomplished all of our goals for teaching and then some. It is crazy how you really can't do anything on your own as a missionary. You have to depend completely on the Lord or nothing happens. I have been feeling that lately so much, especially now that we don't have many people to work with, but we do have some solid ones and I am excited about that. 

I was also able to go and get an eye exam this week which I am SO grateful for. My eyes have been bothering me so much lately, especially because my only pair of glasses I took with me on the mission are broken so I never can give my eyes a break during the day by taking my glasses off. So I was able to order some new glasses and I can't wait for them to get here! Ha funny thing though, so the Doc had to pour these weird drops in my eyes to dilate them super huge and she told me that the drops basically paralyze your eyes, and this was so she could get a more accurate reading she said. But it was the craziest feeling in the world first of all my pupils were so huge that you couldn't see the color of my eyes at all, I just had black eyes it was so freaky! And I could only see things that were 10 to 15 feet in front of me, anything closer than that or further than that was a complete blur, soooooo weird, and my eyes couldn't focus on anything so my whole depth perception was gone.  Seriously the weirdest feeling of my life haha, that lasted about 2 days and Sister K had to drive us around because I was just hazardous haha but I am proud of myself that we were still able to go out and work hard, I just had to wear sunglasses everywhere because my eyes were so big the light hurt so bad haha but all is well now, eyes are good haha I will take pics of my glasses when I get them. I think you will like them! Well that's all for now! Love you all!

Getting ready to teach their Book of Mormon class

Sister Jamison XOXOCTR