Family and friends,
It was an enjoyable week! I'll give an update. We've been doing in person teaching a bit with the granddaughter of our Elder's Quorum president. It was a pretty crazy lesson this last Saturday. Their family can be a little intense with how they address each other sometimes and it seems normal to them. (As a quick background to this, our EQP's granddaughter wanted nothing to do with the missionaries or the church before and last we asked about her he told us he's been trying to figure things out about it for a while. Her parents aren't members. And they don't want anything either. Out of nowhere, when we scheduled a time to visit and teach the EQP's family, their granddaughter was there and it seemed this was all set up to have a lesson with her. We weren't prepared for that but it still went well. She's only 11 so it wasn't too bad ) So we were in a later lesson with this family and granddaughter about a question she had which we prepared for. And that was about why the lessons are important. What was supposed to be a short 5 minute lesson actually turned into her asking tons of questions that didn't exactly always make sense. Or they just weren't really relevant. So we were kind of all over the place while trying to relate each comment or question back to the topic. Based on her previous feelings about the church, you already know that baptism was out of the question. Then the craziest thing - Her Grandpa, our Elders Quorum President, made a comment on something and closed that with, "So what do you think about being baptized two weeks from now?" I nearly choked on my mask. But the second craziest thing happened, she leans over in her chair and responds with saying, "Well now I'm thinking twice about it." So she requested some time to think about it. Of course we said that's fine. But we'll need to talk more with the EQP on her needing more time at least for the lessons. President Pingree oversees all convert baptisms in the mission which means she will need each missionary lesson unless there is special permission. We are only able to teach her once a week so it would be impossible to have her ready in only two weeks. But with that lesson, you can easily see that the Lord works in mysterious ways so you never know for sure. More to follow on that!
We have started English classes using EnglishConnect and that is bringing in a couple people. One person wants us to help her with her English twice each week so we are excited. It's incredible to see all the miracles that are occuring. In person church has been so relieving! It's nice to be back. I gave a talk last Sacrament meeting after being assigned the day before so that was fun. I spoke on temples and eternal families. I had fun doing it! But now I'm assigned to give another talk soon. I don't mind doing that though. I love writing essays and talks. We also recently had a video call with the branch about different cultures. Usually every year they all get together to share different things and foods from their countries. As small as our branch is, they are all very diverse in culture. Many are from places like Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Columbia, Honduras, Guatemala, and many others! The first person who shared was one of the counselors who is from Mexico. It was awesome! He spoke about the Church's history there and I gotta say, I was blown away. He shared some photos of these different ancient drawings and structures. One of them is believed to be something like an ancient drawing of a depiction of Lehi's dream from the Book of Mormon. And another thing shared was something that is believed to have been a baptisimal font. None of it is confirmed for sure but it's just so cool to hear about it. I'll share some photos. Other things we are doing now is going on an adventure to find all the less active families. We're also figuring out how to assist the branch in learning things about technology and family history. It seems everyone wants to have those lessons but no one is ever able to schedule time, even though most of the members are retired. Hopefully we didn't spend hours putting together different presentations for nothing haha.
I'll close with a couple miracles given from two different missionaries in our past mission zoom call. One shared about an experience being at a sacrament meeting and under preparing for the sacrament since their branch's meeting only consisted of him, his companion, and the branch president. At least out of those who attended in person. So they prepared like 10 cups for the bread and water. And for some reason, 10 others decided to show up just shortly before the sacrament began. The Elder felt really pressured to hurry and prepare a couple more cups for the ordinance. In the process he completely forgot about adding more water cups and he didn't realize until it commenced. He said he felt terrible and that there wasn't anything he could do about it, it would just have to be an experience to learn from. He assumed that he and his companion wouldn't take a water and maybe one other person. But he said as the passer brought the trays back to them (they were the ones blessing the sacrament) there were three cups left. And everyone had taken one. So the passer and two missionaries were able to take the water. It reminded everyone of Jesus feeding the 5,000. It was awesome! The other miracle had to do with a Sister Missionary's aunt who was cured of lyme disease. I don't know much about that disease but I know it isn't exactly the easiest thing to cure. She was simply given a blessing, then it disappeared. Things like that are always testimony building! Wait on the Lord and He will direct and bless accordingly. We see what is being fulfilled in a statement from Elder Bednar in the recent training given to President and Sister Pingree which talked about the flood of people to soon come. It's awesome!
Take care!
-Elder Markham
1) Chair Soccer
2-5) Branch culture call
6) Best Eggnog I can find... so far?
7-9) Incredible sunrise!
10-11) Crazy lizards
No comments:
Post a Comment