Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Holli - July 11, 2016


Hello Everyone!

Man, we had quite the week!

We've been working with this awesome guy named Sam. He was a street

contact we had last week and he is going through chemotherapy but he

told us we were welcome to come back and share our message so we met

with him a lot this week. He actually came to church on Sunday and

loved it - he told us how much he admired the members. In one of our

later lessons he told us that he sensed a big part of our church had

to do with families and he said that's something he wanted help with

because his family is basically torn apart. We actually met with his

wife Jackie this week as well and had the opportunity to talk with her

and that was one of the most spiritually painful lessons I've ever

been in. Jackie has become so bitter towards Sam in some of the things

he's done in his life and she doesn't really display much emotion but

she talked to us for maybe thirty minutes straight about all the pain

she is going through.


She told us she would listen to our message but that she wouldn't

believe much about it until she saw Sam make major changes in his

life. This morning as I was studying for the family I thought of the

parable of the prodigal son. Jackie is a lot like the elder brother -

she's lived a good life and goes to church when she can and tries to

maintain her faith and her family but she's so broken inside about

what Sam has done and won't let anyone in to heal her. We had the

bishop's wife with us and she got emotional as she shared her own

experience of coming from a broken home. Sister Cook was also raised

in a similar situation so she could relate too. It made me a lot more

grateful for my parents who work together to maintain a home in

righteousness.


We had the opportunity to spend about three hours in the hot sun

helping to sort food for the Salvation Army with some kids from the

local high school. It was such a blast! We had other missionaries from

our zone come help and it was pretty fun! But we are all so badly

sunburned it's not that funny. We all looked like such tomatoes coming

out of there.


We have this awesome investigator named Vanessa. She just had a stroke

and moved to California for radiation treatment for her cancer. We

teach her every day and she's really cool! Her cousin Joseph actually

referred her but none of her immediate family live nearby. Vanessa's

one hold up is that she really likes her baptist church (friends and

the music) and she has already been baptized twice so she feels like

if she gets baptized again, she'll make Heavenly Father mad. Kind of

strange - but we've been working with her on the proper authority part

:)


So Vanessa is so great. She comes to church but needs a ride so we

have a member go pick her up and getting her into the car is so

stressful because like the left half of her body can't move so it's

like doing the hokey pokey to get her into the car. And then we wheel

her around in a wheelchair during church that is pretty painful for

her. Haha, and she had to go to the bathroom and needed help . . .

Poor Sister Cook wheeled her into the handicapped stall and then

jetted back out with this freaked out look in her eyes so it was up to

me! Haha that was fun :)


We had such a cool experience park contacting the other night. There

were these girls there that were getting ready for volleyball

practice and my heavens they reminded me so much of all my younger

cousins! They were so cute and fun to talk to! They asked about who we

were and what we did and then talked about who they were and what they

did. So fun! Then we walked over to a table and contacted this guy and

he looked pretty down. We started talking with him and he said he used

to be super religious but that all changed when a series of tragic

events happened in his life so he chose not to believe in God at all.

I asked him if he was happy now and he said that he was miserable but

he wouldn't believe in God. Wow . . . what a difference it can make in

a person's life if they will only choose to believe! We felt so bad

for him as he walked away but we know Heavenly Father will look out

for His son.


That's about it for the week! Thank you all for your letters and

support! Have an awesome week!


Love, Sister Dunn

No comments:

Post a Comment