Sister Henson-It's raining! Green is almost here!

What a week! Satan has been working really hard to destroy the work that we’ve been trying to do here. Sister Moore tripped the other day as we were tracting some apartments. She fell down about 7 stairs and broke her ankle pretty bad. She had to go back home for surgery, I just hope she comes back out. The day before that, a member of the singles ward proposed to me…. Diamond ring and everything. His name is John and he is one of the ward missionaries. It was really embarrassing because it was at a ward activity and we had investigators there. As you can imagine, I didn’t appreciate it very much and neither did President Newman. He emergency transferred me out of the area and put two Elders to take over the work. Because of the lack of Sisters, I was put into a threesome with a companionship of Elders serving in the Benson ward…. Wait a minute… Elders?… hahahaha… April Fools! Ok, I’ll really tell the truth about this week….
I have never been so blessed, tired, grateful, humble, happy, amazed and excited! What an incredible week! As you well know, this week we ran full speed towards the Mission of Excellence. And guess what?! Our companionship got the Standard! Our district was close, and so was the mission! I’ve never worked so hard and smart before. As I look back, I’m amazed by how much the Lord blessed me, my companion, the members and the area. I barely slept, hardly ate, but the Spirit sustained me to be able to accomplish the work that the Lord laid before us. Now please keep in mind that although we’re working to accomplish goals that are represented by numbers, those numbers represent people. And that was where all of the miracles were found, with the people we met and taught this week. Here are some highlights of those people and miracles:
Matt Young, we met him tracting in the same complex as Trevor and Justin. As we were teaching him the Restoration and were talking about Prophets of the Old Testament, he asks, “Well, since there aren’t prophets on the earth today, should we just listen to the Pope?” I wish you could have seen the surprise on his face when I told him that there were prophets on the earth today. He said the closing prayer and thanked Heavenly Father “for sending these wonderful people to tell me about modern prophets and I hope this is a Church that I will love.” Just before we walked out he looked at the Book of Mormon and said, “This book is going to bring me so much closer to Jesus Christ.” It was so neat. He came to Church yesterday and loved it.
Chris was a referral from the Millard Elders, Bernards and Sperry. We went on companion exchanges Saturday morning and so Sister Allen and I went to see him. He spoke like he was already a member of the church, and had been his entire life. After we shared the First Vision with him and were bearing our testimonies he seemed to be shaking slightly. Towards the end of the lesson he says, “There is something to this, I’m nervous about it, feeling the Spirit today even made me shake a little. Please just give me some time for the Spirit to work with me.” He had refused a Book of Mormon from the Elders but seemed to greedily take one from us.
Freido, whose real, full name is Ahoelete Adadjisso. I think I told you already that he is from Togo, West Africa. He speaks Mina, French and English, all very well. He is one of my favorite investigators. He came to Church on Sunday and expressed that he felt the Spirit and enjoyed the casualness of the meeting (it was fast and testimony Sunday). He is from a Catholic background so he is used to a lot of rituals and formalities. We taught him after Church and had planned to teach him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We talk about faith, which it leads to repentance, then baptism, then receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end, and then we start that Gospel cycle all over again. As we began to teach, it didn’t feel right, and then I remembered that last time we taught him, we had talked about the Plan of Salvation but hadn’t finished it due to his questions. I somehow re-routed the lesson to teach him about the Judgment, Resurrection and the Kingdoms of Glory. Wow, I’ve never seen someone recognize truth so quickly. I just love seeing people progress, recognize truth and feel the Spirit. It’s my favorite part about being a missionary. I was so grateful to be able to teach so much.
I mentioned our companion exchanges earlier. It was so much fun! This was the first time in my mission that I’ve gone on one. Usually, the Sisters don’t do them because missionaries will go with their District or Zone Leaders (who are Elders). Well, Sisters and Elders cannot go on exchanges, which would be a date, and just wouldn’t work out ;)
Since my area is really made up of everyone else’s areas, we are often finding people for other areas, and sometimes they find young single adults for us. We had been spending a lot of time finding in the Elkhorn area lately and had a bunch of people we wanted to turn over and Elkhorn actually had a lot of people for us to teach. So President approved a companion exchange! I went with Sister Allen who has been out a couple transfers longer than I have. She is incredible! She is so bold, diligent and a master teacher. I learned so much from her. I hope that President will have us go out on these more often. We had a great time teaching together and learning.
Thank you for all your prayers of faith. The Lord answered them in such a powerful way this last week. Don’t slack, I’ll need a lot of prayers to keep the momentum going! I love you, Happy April!
Sister Henson