Member Missionary Work

June 27, 2016

This week was awesome... but a little exhausting! 

I got super lucky... the missionary I'm training (Hermana Jonapá from Chiapas, Mexico) IS AMAZING!!! I love her so much. She is kind, funny, and a great missionary, with the desire to serve and work hard. She's going to do amazing things in her mission. 

And I am still here in the same ward... but we had our area split in half. Half the area to work in would sound easier and less stressful, but half the area means half of the investigators that we had before. Which means that we focus even more on finding than normal. Which means a lot of contacting - knocking doors, and the like. There were a couple times that we ran into a member in the street and I was just like "hey... can you take 5 minutes and present us to your neighbors?" We always try to get the members to help us... but I was never so direct until I became so desperate to find new, quality investigators like I was this past week. And we had some members who were totally awesome and took us to meet their friends and neighbors in the moment and we found a few really cool new investigators. I INVITE YOU ALL TO HELP THE MISSIONARIES. You would never believe the difference it makes to show up at the door with a member with you. When we go alone, the truth is that knocking doors is not all that effective. But when we show up with a member we are almost always invited in, or if they really are busy they invite us back. But seriously, members are key.

There´s this huge collection of apartment buildings in our area and we were knocking doors and talking with people over there, and at one point I wasn't thinking and I knocked the Relief Society President's door.... so then I panicked because... well, it's a little awkward to knock a members door when you weren't planning to visit them, but even more awkward, was that I had actually asked her if we could visit so that I could present my new companion to her and she had told me not that day so I was going to be super embarrassed if we showed up uninvited... so I told my comp we had to run. She was a little confused... But those split second decisions are sometimes a little funny.

We get really attached to the members and investigators and this week we found out that one of our investigators had his cancer come back ): He had stopped going to church and wasn't working very much and he just told us it was because of his diabetes... but we didn't realize until this week that it was something more serious. It made me really sad. Hopefully we can keep teaching him and help him to complete all the things that we should do in this life.

We were teaching this same investigator and we were telling him, like we always do with those we teach, that he needed to pray to know if what we were teaching was true. And he told us that he would pray but he also told us he already felt that it was and that he "didn't think we would come from so far away to lie to [him]." It was so cool to hear that from someone. A lot of people don't feel that way, but the truth is that the mission is only special because the message we are sharing is true. I know that this is the true church and I know that God loves us and wants us to come back to live with Him and that He gave us His Son to make it possible. Not a doubt in my mind.

I love you all! Hope you have a great week! 

Hermana Aubriana Wolferts