Monday 5 May 2014

Grasshoppers and the Holy Ghost

Kumusta everybody!
So this week, its good to be back! Me and my comp are like the dream
team, we just get each other and because of that the work is going so
well. We had a lot of really great and memorable experiences this week
and I'm really remembering what it is to be a missionary.

This weeks theme was well and truly the Holy Ghost. It was our lesson
in every meeting we had and really resonated in all of our work this
week. We had this one experience especially with the sisters in our
house who prayed to know where they should go to find new
investigators. They both felt strongly about this really far away
neighbourhood with no members and only one former investigator. So
after a really random series of events on Saturday night we all ended
up at this members house for dinner and he offers to take us where we
were going. It was getting late so the sisters were just saying they
would bail and go there the next day instead, until we realise the
really random way hes driving us home is IN that neighbourhood. So
they jump out and ask him if he happens to know this one random
investigators. Hes like, get in. Takes us to this MANSION and starts
yelling at them to come outside, missionaries are here, and takes us
away. We're sitting there like, something big is about to happen. When
they got home that night they told us the incredible story of the
family who immediately invited them in and told them they had been
waiting for them. The dad has RM sisters and always opposed the church
but over time of trying to disprove the church came to know it was
true, but was never baptised as he was unable to stop his drinking,
but was waiting for the right time. And this was it. There is no
possible way to deny the Holy Ghost once you have experienced it.

We have been working a lot on part member families, and a lot of
single mums who went less-active so their kids were never baptised.
This one woman in particular, the missionaries never teach her because
shes never home. The three kids under twelve come to church by
themselves because the mum has to work 13 hours a day every single day
of the week so she can feed them. They used to be well off and were a
really strong happy family until the dad left them for another woman
and took everything, their house their businesses, and left them with
nothing. We managed to catch her coming home late one night and barely
got her to sit down to listen to us. Once I heard her side of the
story I couldn't blame her, it was awful, her testimony is as strong
as it ever was but she just can't not feed her kids. For the first
time in a long time I cried, I usually have it pretty together, just
look at the logical side of things, or the fact that if they just do
the right thing it will all work out, but I couldn't help it with her,
she just needs more. I just didn't have the words to say because I
just cannot relate in any way to what shes been though, but something
in what we said must have stuck because Sunday morning the whole
family was sitting together in church, happier than I've ever seen any
of them.

We had this other incredible experience this week on Tuesday morning.
We went to an investigators house and she wasn't there, we should have
left because we had somewhere else to be but we asked the grandma if
we could teach her. Turns out she's a less active we didn't know
about. Just as were saying the closing prayer, her granddaughter walks
down, so we teach her too. Just as were closing again another lady
walks down the path and sits down. By the time we're finished praying
she is bawling her eyes out. She is an old friend of the family and
also happens to be a less active member. She tells us her husband is a
drunk and abuses her, so shes been having an affair. She could never
have children with her husband but is now pregnant so she knows its to
the other man. She said her only two options were to go with the other
man and commit adultery, or stay with the husband and commit abortion.
She was destraught. I was sitting there at first so so scared for this
woman, and scared for the huge responsibility she had placed on us,
and knowing whatever we said was going to have a huge effect on what
happened. I prayed, as you do when you don't know what else to do. So
I told her, and I was harsh and I was bold which doesn't seem like the
think to do with a woman in that state, and I told her that the answer
to sin was not more sins, and God didn't do this to her but her
choices had led her to this point. It was incredible to see this
working over in her head. By the end of the lesson she was smiling
again and she really had felt the Spirit. As we walked her back to the
road she said the whole day before she had seen missionaries
everywhere and wanted so bad to talk to them, then last night she went
to her friends house in Vigan and the elders there taught her but she
didn't have the courage to tell them. Then she didn't know why, but
she walked here the whole way from Vigan, which would have taken hours
and hours, not knowing why she was going to this womans house, and
meeting us there because we'd stuck around longer than we planned. The
Lord's plan is perfect, and everything happens for a reason. Except
our sins, those things don't need to happen so we should stop doing
them.

This calling is like nothing else, nobody else in the world can
possibly understand what is feels like to be set apart with this
calling except those who have done it. I don't want to go home and
have to experience that feeling of being released. I love this work.

Love you all, even you random readers out there!
Sister McKim

A family gave us mangos so the kid just climbed on the roof and picked
them off for us. We had a dinner appointment this week and they served
these cooked, I don't even know what its called, its like a locust
grasshopper thing. They told me to eat it and I was like yep get it in
me. I've changed apparently ha. And the tiger and his chicken head
lunch, masarap!




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