Missionary Chronicles: Knock, Knock, Knock

¡Hola a todos! 

How was this week? I hope it went well for y'all and you saw the Lord's Hand everyday! My week was full of new adventures and I'm excited to fill y'all in! First we have a birthday shout-out for my cousin Sam! Happy Birthday!! I hope it was a great one!

It's been a great first week here in the Paper Mill Ward! This probably sounds so dumb, but learning to do missionary work in English has been quite the adventure for me this week haha. English is my first language, but I've never taught the gospel in English so I'm having to re-learn it and it's made for some very laughable moments this week. 

This new area is really cool and we've got some amazing people who we're working with. First off, we have Anglea (Sister Smith). She was just baptized 15 days and she is one of the sweetest souls I've ever met! Her conversion story is a powerful one and I feel so blessed to have the chance to work with her and help her solidify her testimony! Our next friends that we're working with are Sam and Felix. They are a young couple who are honestly looking for the truth. Felix's family is from Mexico and Sam studied Spanish in college, so I've had fun practicing my Spanish with them. Our main goal with them right now is helping them to except the witness of the Spirit as the truth. They both want to see the evidence that the Book of Mormon and the Bible work together, but they need to except the Spirit's witness as a testimony of that. I love them both so much, and I'm excited to continue working with them! Our last friend is Jewell. I actually haven't met her in person yet, bit I already have such a love for her from what Sister Christman has told me about her. Jewell has a strong desire to get baptized, but she isn't keeping commitments. During our weekly planning this week, Sister Christman and I prayed for inspiration on how to help her and we got the idea of putting her on date for baptism and seeing if that motivates her to keep commitments. So, this week we're going to try and get Jewell on date for baptism. If y'all could keep her in your prayers, I'd really appreciate it!

Another interesting thing about this new area is a project that President Harris has asked Sister Christman to implement here. He's calling it his "pilot project" and it basically means that when we go and stop by our grey-dot houses, President wants us to knock on all of the neighboring doors. So basically we are "statistically tracting" haha. So yes, I knocked my first doors this week. We had a lot of them closed in our faces, but we did have one miracle. We knocked on one specific door and a girl about our age opened it. She mentioned that we looked really nice and asked us what we were doing. We told her that we're missionaries and we share messages about Jesus Christ. We found out that her name is Kolbie and that she attends a Baptist church here is Roswell. We asked her if she'd be interested is meeting with us and she said she was so we set a return appointment for this next Saturday. It didn't actually occur to us that we just got our first return appointment from knocking doors until we were back in the car. It was awesome and a huge miracle!!

I was also blessed with the opportunity to meet Brother Terry this week. He is a member of the Paper Mill Ward who has the missionaries over all the time to do service for him. He has a large portion of property that backs up a good ways into the woods behind his home. There is a tiger flowing way back in the woods, and Brother Terry dug kind of a mote around part of his property to make an island where the go camping and things like that. He's a super cool guy! Well, when we pulled up to do Service on Saturday he told us that he has been having problems with beavers building a dam up the river that then causes his mote to flood. So, us and the Portuguese Elders trekked back into the woods about half a mile and we found the beaver dam. While standing in slick mud up to our ankles and trying not to fall into the river, we broke through the beaver dam and got the river flowing again. We then walked back toward Brother Terry's property where he then wanted us to build a bridge over a little part of the river where if it floods again, he'll still be able to drive his lawnmower over it. So, we built a really solid bridge using giant railroad ties each weighing between 100-200 lbs. We were all so muddy and sore and I suffered a slight tussle with a railroad tube but we had a great time out in the woods just working hard!

For my spiritual thought this week, I'd like to share a very powerful experience that our mission had this past week. On Tuesday, we had a mission wide devotional in Lilburn and we had Elder David A. Bednar join us over zoom! It was an incredible experience to hear from an Apostle of the Lord and the specific words he had prepared for our mission! Elder Bednar focused his devotional on the Book of Mormon as our main tool of the harvest. One powerful quote he shared was, "It's not reasonable to believe that Joseph Smith fabricated the Book of Mormon". Elder Bednar bore a firm testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and it was an extremely powerful experience for me. Then, just yesterday I finished reading the Book of Mormon all the way through in Spanish. As I read those last few verses in Moroni, I reflect on this powerful devotional from Elder Bednar as well as my personal testimony of the Book of Mormon. It's true in every language and I know without a doubt that this book came straight from God. It is the blueprint for our lives and it shows us the way to return to our Heavenly Father! This week I want to invite y'all to make the Book of Mormon the keystone of your life. Study it daily in the spirit of prayer and I promise that you will see and gain a firm testimony of it's truthfulness!

Alright y'all, that's all I've got for this week! I hope this next week is a great one for y'all! Let me know how I can pray for y'all this week! I love y'all!

Hermana Adams 

Pictures:

1: Sister Christman and I

2: Super muddy after working with Brother Terry 

3: Our bridge that we built

4: Breaking through the Beaver Dam