COVID Missionary Chronicles: "Fourth Floor Last Door"

¡Hola a todos!

How was y'alls week? I hope it was so amazing!! Today we have two birthday shout outs!!! My cousin Mia had a birthday and my girl Mary Hunter has a birthday today!!! Happy birthday to both of you!!! I am so thankful for all of the encouraging notes and emails I got last week! There are definitely hard weeks, but I'm doing my best to keep my head up and keep moving forward!!

Alright, this past week was way better and I've got some amazing stories for y'all!! This past week was the start of a new transfer, which opens a lot of opportunities for us to reevaluate and make changes to the way we do the work.

For starters, even though it was so sad to say goodbye to Sister Robertson and Sister Rodgers, the new sister who moved into the apartment is way cool! Her name is Sister Flannery and she was originally called to South America so she's a Spanish missionary. Her Spanish is so good and she is so willing to help Sister Grover and I! I'm so excited to see what else I'll be able to learn from her this transfer!

One of the main changes we made going into this transfer was our approach to finding. We have decided to ATTACK this area with in-person finding! My first transfer we did a lot of area book and social media finding. We wanted to change that up a little bit this next time around. Let me tell ya, we saw miracles this week!!! These next two stories are where the email title comes in. 

Our first experience took place of Wednesday. Hermana Grover and I decided to go and walk around a trailer park to see if there was anyone outside we could talk to. We ended up walking laps around this trailer park for like 45 minutes and absolutely nobody was outside. We decided to call it quits and try another day and as we were walking back to the car we saw a lady walking along the side of the road in front of us. We picked up our pace trying to catch up to her and when we finally got close enough Hermana Grover calls out, "Hermana, como esta?" This lady turns around, takes one look at us, and starts walking away faster. This next part completely blew my mind. I kid you not, Hermana Grover started running after this lady. We finally caught up to her and talked for a minute. She didn't seem too interested in the gospel but we gave her a flyer for our English class and sent her on her way with a smile. If we had called it quits earlier, we would've never had the chance to cross paths with this lady. We have been praying so hard to find people who to talk to and the Lord placed her in our path at the very last minute. 

The next experience was equally as amazing! On Thursday night we had planned to go to the church and make a service advertisement to post on Facebook. As I pulled into the church parking lot Sister Grover and I looked at each other and felt like there was something else we should've been doing. We sat there for a minute and decided to go and try store contacting at the Tiendas. We went to the first store with no luck. We went to the next store and walked around for a while, but there was like actually nobody there. As we were walking out, Hermano Rivas from the Branch should up at the store. We chatted with him and walked around with him while he did his shopping. When he was finished, we helped him bring his groceries to his truck. He then asked us how many people we had talked to that night. When we told him zero, he stayed quite for a minute then said to us in Spanish "Hermanas, try for 10 more minutes. There is someone here who needs you". With that motivation, we turned around and went to walk back into the store. We caught site of this guy smoking a cigarette on his truck bed. We walked up and started talking to him. We found out his name was José and that he was religious when he was younger but has kind of lost sight of God as he's gotten older. He said he'd be interested in hearing a message from us, so we exchanged numbers and gave him the information for church! We messaged him yesterday and still haven't heard back, so if y'all could pray for him to have a desire to meet with us, that'd be awesome! This was just another example! Hermano Rivas was inspired to send us back to the store, because there was one more person we needed to talk to!

The talk "Fourth Floor; Last Door" has been on my mind constantly this week! As we've gone about our finding efforts, it's always at the very last moment that the Lord puts someone in our path. This applies to life in general as well! We only see the blessings of our efforts as we strive and struggle to get there! I'm so thankful that I was able to learn this lesson this week! 

And now, I have a favor to ask of y'all. I'm sure y'all remember our friend Luz. After 4 weeks of not hearing from her at all, Hermana Grover and I decided to drop by her house this week to check in on her. Thankfully she was home, and we had the chance to chat with her for a few minutes. Turns out that the reason she hasn't answered us is because her son José had a really really bad injury to his knee playing soccer at school. He has 6 torn ligaments and needs a couple of major surgeries to repair the damage. Luz has been very stressed and busy trying to help José on top of working all day every day. They don't have the money they need for the surgeries, so they're working with the hospital to try and apply for some sort of "scholarship" thing to help pay for it. I wanted to ask y'all to keep them in your prayers and if you feel inclined, please include them in your fast in a couple weeks as well. I love this sweet family so much, and I know they would really appreciate the extra prayers!

Alright everyone, that's all I've got for this week! I hope this upcoming week is a great one for y'all and that you see blessings in your lives! I love y'all so much! Thanks for your continued support!! Love y'all!!

Hermana Adams

Pictures:

1. Last picture of us all before Sister Robertson and Sister Rodgers left

2. Me outside one of our Tiendas 

3. Only in Georgia...

4. Sidewalk chalk for finding on Saturday 

5-8. Here's a couple more pictures from our Hike today!!