This week has been a bit of blur to me, so sorry if this email is a letdown! But I'll try to think of some good stuff...
I guess I'll start off by sharing a little miracle that we had this week. We were out doing finding, and Sister Hudson and I decided beforehand to think of who it was that we wanted to find. I've found throughout my mission that when I have a vision, it helps me focus and remain motivated. So we said a prayer and felt that we should be looking for a male that has heard about the gospel before. We began our finding and had the faith that God would place someone in our path. We were talking to EVERYONE. We got a few people to stop and chat, but for the most part we would get a scoff and a sneer, and it was just getting discouraging! We kept walking up and down the tiny little high street in Thetford, just trying to find someone, ANYONE, who would listen. Our finding time was coming to a close, and we were feeling a bit discouraged that we didn't find the person we had prayed for. We were literally just about to walk into the door of Subway for lunch, when all of a sudden we see a familiar face! It was a man that we had met the previous week. When we originally met him he was in a rush to get somewhere, but he said if he ran into us again he would have a conversation with us about the church. And here he was!! We were able to introduce the Book of Mormon to him, and he really had the desire to learn more about it, so we set up another appointment to see him this upcoming week! We are so excited! And it was a direct answer to our prayer. Miracles are real! And to make it even better, his name is Karzan. Yeah, I know, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't Tarzan too... but Karzan is a pretty close second haha.
Hmmmm... what else. Well, I got super glue all over my hands this week. That was a miserable experience. I think by the end of that mishap I had practically taken off a layer of skin all over my fingers. Nice. I also burned my neck with my curling iron. I have a cool scar to prove it. Nice. We took a zone picture where we were all jumping, and when I went to look at it, realised my whole skirt came up. Nice. Deleted that picture faster than anyone could say "wait." So luck wasn't on my side this week haha! But it was still great. Life as a missionary still ROCKS.
Zone pictures!
I read an address by President Gordon B. Hinckley this week that I particularly liked, especially due to the fact that sometimes the work [of missionaries] can be discouraging. Sometimes it feels like you're just trying all day long to share this amazing message, and people are just kickin' you to the curb. President Hinckley said to the missionaries in the Provo MTC in 1998:
"You ought to take advantage of every opportunity in the world to speak with people about why we are there and what we are doing, and give them some taste of a gospel message. You never can tell that, while they may not join the Church at that time, a later missionary may bump into them, and he will remind them of a time when they met a former missionary, and that may lead to conversion and baptism.
"I know of a family exactly like that in Germany. My son tracted him out, and it wasn't until seven years later that he joined the Church. But he still harks back to that first contact that he had so long before. So we just work at it. We don't get discouraged. That is easy to say, but you don't get discouraged in the mission field. You don't get offended. Brother Sterling Sill, who was an insurance man, once said, 'I've been spit on. I've been sworn at. I've been kicked out the front door and right onto the ground. But I've never been insulted.' That's the kind of attitude that we use when we are in the mission field. We may be spit on. We may be sworn at. We may be kicked off the front porch. But we'll never be insulted."
I loved this little tidbit from his address. Sometimes it is easy to feel so downtrodden by the way people react, especially when it seems that everyone is so quickly moving away from God in general. But I just remind myself that maybe they're not ready now, but in the future some of those individuals WILL be ready. And they WILL remember the time they met the missionaries in the past. Sometimes it's easy to ask why the work is so hard, but as Elder Jeffrey R. Holland says, "Missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience!" So I'm gonna just keep on sharing this great message, and I know the spirit will do the rest!
Love you all! Have a superb week! Oh, and GO TEAM USA! And alright.... I'll root for England too ;)
Love,
Sister Syddall
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