Sister Michelle Christine North: Door 5(hundred)

Good news! I am feeling better and am moving forward now. Hermana and I are very happy to feel the blessings of being back, 100%, to this work. It was a miracle because on Monday evening around 5:30 (just an hour before we had our citas) I was like a new person. I had energy; I felt good; I was healed. Thank you so much for all of your magic prayers, they helped me so.

This week we focused a lot on finding new investigators. Our sector is booming with progressing inactive members but our pool of progressing investigators is basically non-existent. Belen is still doing well, looking diligently for her answer, but she went out of town until April and as for Jexis and Rodolfo, we had to say “bye” to them this week. We love them so much but they just aren’t willing to open up their hearts to the specific message that we have to share. They loved to talk about the scriptures and God but they weren’t willing to commit to anything, which equals no progress. It was hard for me to make that decision to tell them that we weren’t going to be able to come over and share with them anymore, but I knew that Heavenly Father would bless us for trusting him and letting them go. We are here to invite people to come unto Christ through the message of the Restored gospel. As the people exercise their faith, they come to understand better God’s plan and love for them; they change their desires for God’s and they are willing to do what the Spirit guides them to do. Unfortunately, when we don’t see this progress with our loves, we have to let them go in order to fulfill our purpose as missionaries so that we can find those people who are willing to change and accept the gospel. And like I said, the Lord always blesses us for trusting Him.

One of the days this week Hermana Tadeo and I went tracting for 3 hours. We were excited to find new people because it had been so long since we had been able to put that much time into the finding process. It started out super great but after walking and walking and walking, knocking, knocking and knocking and having no success for 2 ½ straight hours we started getting a little discouraged. Also we were tired and it was getting cold, so we decided to say a prayer to keep the Spirit with us. After that, I told hermana that we would try five more houses and if not that we would head over to our next cita. As we were walking I had a tender mercy as I looked up at the sky and saw the moon. It looked absolutely beautiful and it made me realize how much God loved us. A reminder of His reality and that even though I couldn’t see Him, that he was there with us. Isn’t that lovely People? That when things are going all wrong in our day or if we feel a little discouraged, that God sends us His love through the beauty that He has already created for us. It also helped me forget how cold and tired I was. I told Tadeo that even if we didn’t have exito [Success] with finding a new person, that God loved us and would bless us for our efforts later. After all, Nephi had to try three times before he actually obtained the gold plates.

We knocked on a couple more doors and still the same results. As we were walking to knock on door 5, I looked across the street and saw a man smoking outside of his house. This was our conversation (in translation of course):

Me: “Hola! Have you seen the moon?”

Javier: “Yeah, it looks very pretty.”

Me: “What are you doing?”

Javier: “Smoking.”

Me: “That’s really bad for your health you know.”

Javier: “Yeah, I know. But it’s my vice.”

Me: “Would you like to quit that vice?”

Javier: Yeah, but it’s hard.”

Me: “We can help you!”

Javier: “Really, how?”

And then we went over to talk to him and when we got to his gate he put out his cigarette- progress already. He told us that he was Christian but believed in God in his own way (something that we hear all of the time which is just an excuse for saying that they don’t have time in their lives to go to church etc). He also mentioned that about two years ago he met two missionaries but he never took the lessons. We gave him a condensed version of the message of the Restoration, starting with prophets and ending with the first vision. We told him that he could pray to know if what we shared with him was true and he agreed to do so. It was super RAD! He had a lot of doubts, but the good thing was that he had a lot of faith that God would answer his prayers. He told us that we could come back and teach him and his family- it just goes to show that God blesses us in His own perfect timing, even if it seems like the last minute for us.

We continued to have tender mercies like that throughout the week. We found new people to teach through references, through the families of our inactive loves and at the bus station but, all in unexpected moments. I am super excited to see what potential all of them have this week. I’ll keep you updated on our success, or the opposite. Ha ha.

Take care. I love you guys so!

Xoxox, Hermana North

p.s: English is starting to get super difficult for me to speak. It hasn’t been part of my vocabulary for the past 6 months. I actually have to think hard to talk to people in English. Crazy huh?

picture 1: We made chocolate chip cookies with Tiare (our innactive love- Jesse's daughter)