I'm staying in the Allen 1st Ward area in Allen. Neither Sister Ricks or I got transferred.
On another cheery note- it's almost Christmas! And in the words of some famous singer: "So this is Christmas and what have you done?"
Well I have done a bit this week. Tuesday we watched Mr. Krueger's Christmas with a elderly woman who is investigating the church. Her husband passed away last year and I was prompted to invite her to watch the video with us at a member's home. She loved watching it and said 'it was well made' along with many other positive things about it like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Jimmy Stewart. Yet, it seemed like she thought nothing more about it, which is why she is a constant joy to teach :[
She is firmly planted in her faith and is still only curious about learning. But I love her with every part of my soul and I'm beginning to understand "patience is a virtue". We let her talk a while after that and eventually she asked us what our plans were for Christmas. We said we didn't have any yet, and that surprised her. She was like "What? You? You sisters always say you have an appointment every day of the week, but not on Christmas?" SO she said, "Well if you don't have anyone feeding you, you can have dinner with me, but if any of your 'church people' invite you over, just so ya know, I'm punting you over to them"(she has a Minnesota accent :P) So I was like(in my mind) "WE ARE SPENDING CHRISTMAS WITH YOU IF ITS THE LAST THING WE DO". I ain't hav'in none of this "I'll spend it with my pets(she has 4), I'll be fine." NOPE! I'm pretty sure she is why Sister Ricks and I are staying for 7 more weeks.
I'll keep you posted about her.
So normally I don't talk about negative experiences but this one I feel prompted to share.
Saturday, 2 people got angry at us. We were trying to reach a member that was in our ward directory but that we had never me,t so we knocked on the door and a lady opened up and we introduced ourselves and after we said 'latter day saints' she said 'not interested' and tried to shut the door which is a common response. I said "Wait, we're looking for Thomas" and she opened up the door said something along the lines of< "He's either dead or doesn't live here" and then shut the door.
So we brushed it off and decided he definitely didn't live there anymore. So we returned to the car (a return missionary was driving us around that night) and we were just deciding where we were going next, when an old man came to the driver's door. We rolled down the window and he went off on us. He said "you Mormons are sick going through a person's mail and deciding 'oh we'll make a Mormon out of this man', whose dead, and I hope you feel bad about yourselves!" Plus much more. Yeah, we couldn't get a word in and we just pulled away very quickly once he left. Afterwards we joked a little about the hostility we had because it wasn't our fault that man accused us of things that we don't do. If he had been willing to listen, or even waned to know what it is that we were doing, he would of found out that the man we were looking for was already a member anyway and that we NEVER make anyone do anything that they don't want to do.
That's something else that I love about the Truths that we share. It's all our choice. Its always been about our choice. If we didn't have agency we would have never have been able to choose to come to earth. If we didn't get to choose to make mistakes and good decisions we would never progress and then life would be meaningless. Think of how many people don't know that. That's crazy! We need to let everyone know what amazing joys we have and choose to share those with others.
So we need to share the gift of the Truth of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ with those around us because “You never know. You never know whether you do any good. You never know how much good you do.” So do it!
I'm thankful for everyone that made a choices that helped me get where I am now. Thanks to all of you for choosing to be amazing :)
Loving to choose,
Sister Baker
Loving to choose, Sister Baker