Tours on Temple Square

Sister Fogg and Sister Smiley

Oh my goodness, it's already the sixth week of the transfer (there are six weeks in a transfer). It has whizzed by pretty fast. On Monday we have transfer conference and I find out what happens to me for the next six weeks of my life. I'll be in my fifth transfer already.

Today is a special p-day because we have the entire day off, we didn't have to go and work at the square at all. The sisters are working really hard this summer and it seems like they're dropping like flies with ailments associated with exhaustion and stress. So I think that the purpose of this p-day was to get us all back together for the last leg of this summer. We got to sleep in today and I slept all the way until 6:35am. I usually wake up at 6:00 to run the canyon, so it was kind of sleeping in. It was nice not to wake up to an alarm, though. Sister Fogg and I went running in the canyon this morning and instead of running downhill half of the way we ran uphill half of the way. It was wonderful being able to go at our own pace without worrying about the slower sisters in the back. I also plan on making pumpkin bread today, I'm quite excited about that.

We've had some good tours this week. The other day we were looking for someone to take on a tour and we approached a woman looking at a map (a good indicator that they have no idea about Temple Square) and we offered to tell her a bit about the history and the basic beliefs. She said yes, but hesitantly. We asked her why she was hesitant and she told us that she had been here 30 years ago and she took a tour and they got her phone number and they kept calling her. She isn't very religious and didn't want us to convert her. We smiled and said, "we won't convert you". The thing that she didn't know is that we don't convert anyone, it's the Spirit that has the converting power. There isn't anything that we can say that will convert her. So we focused a lot on the history and pioneer stories here and she definitely felt the Spirit. Even though she didn't refer for missionaries, it was a successful tour. Her heart was softened and she doesn't have the same feelings towards missionaries on Temple Square. I love watching people's hearts soften.

We were in the Tabernacle one day and a man from China (that lives in Pennsylvania now) approached us and started asking us about prophets. We realized that that was the concern that we had planned to address for that hour of the day, and he was the one that we needed to talk to. He was asking some really good questions about the church and he was hungry for answers. About three minutes later we invited him to learn more from missionaries at home and his response was, "can I fill out the card now?" He was truly prepared before coming to Temple Square and all we had to do was to be here. Sometimes it's just important to show up to your mission and the prepared people just find you. Miracles.