Hi! I'm about a week into my second transfer now! So Sister Williams came in on Wednesday from Florida and she is pretty much amazing. She is a crazy Scottish sister, but knows so much about missionary work. We've been working well together for the past week and I have a lot to learn from her. She brought back some cooking skills from Florida and she taught me how to make some Honduran (I don't know what you call stuff from Honduras) food. It was a home made tortilla with refried beans, eggs, cream/cheese stuff, and cheese. It was really good.
We had a miracle on the Square the other day. We were walking back to the South Visitors' Center (SVC) to get our stuff to go to the motors and I was telling Sister Williams that we needed to find someone on the Square to refer so that we could teach them. Outside the SVC there is an information booth and there was a family figuring out what to do so we told them that we could show them around. It was a mother, father, their son, and the mother's brother. They lived in California but are originally from the Philippines. We took them to the Temple model and talked about Joseph Smith by his statue by the shell fountain. The mother was especially interested and asked a lot of questions about how it compared to Catholicism because that is what her family is as well as pretty much the rest of the Philippines. We told them the Joseph Smith story and took them down into the basement of the North Visitors' Center (NVC) and showed them the display about our current prophet and the twelve Apostles. We shared with them a clip from President Monson's last General Conference talk (the one about gratitude, you can make a link if you want) and the dad really liked it. The family referred, so we are calling them tomorrow night to share more with them. It was amazing just how quickly my plea was answered.
Update on Aleck: we tried to call him again, but he didn't pick up his phone. That is the biggest problem I have here with teaching. We can get a bunch of referrals but none of them pick up their phones afterwards even if we set up a time to call them back.
Sister Williams and I have desk duty almost every day. It is usually in three hour blocks that we are at the desk. Sometimes it is busy and other times it is really slow. The main purpose of that job is to welcome people into the Visitors' Centers. It is a little frustrating at times because we would rather be out talking to people and finding people to take on tours, but I'm learning a lot from doing the desk. We can ask members for potentials and so I'm working on talking to people and inviting them. I feel like the weather is always something that we talk about here and so I'm trying not to talk so much about it because it is really a pretty boring subject. If I can find a way to bridge it back to the gospel it would be fine, maybe I should think about that. We do a lot of bridging from one topic to the next here. I played a kind of game with Sister Williams today where you pick three topics from the lessons in Preach My Gospel, like Tithing, Word of Wisdom, and the Book of Mormon, and then you have to bridge the three topics in that order. It's a fun game to play and also helps you learn how to make transitions in a tour.
Today I was studying lesson two in Preach My Gospel about the Plan of Salvation. I was trying to find a theme in the lesson because it helps me to focus my teaching on something. For example in the first lesson about the Restoration, the theme could be that Heavenly Father wants to communicate with us. As a was reading about the Plan of Salvation I was realizing that every principle in the lesson points to the Atonement. Without Jesus Christ's perfect Atonement the Plan of Salvation would not be possible in the slightest. We could not overcome physical death or spiritual death (sin) and there would be no way for us to return to live with our Father in Heaven. I am so grateful for the Atonement and what it means in my life. Because of it I can become a better person and feel the burden of pain and sin lifted from my shoulders. My favorite scripture in the Book of Mormon about the Atonement is Alma 7:11-13. I love how it talks about how Christ didn't only suffer for our sins, but also for the pains and afflictions that we have in this life. It is comforting to know that because He walked alone that we will never have to.
Happy Easter!
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