Christmas has been the BEST as a missionary!!!!! Seriously, I thought it'd be the hardest time of the year, and yeah I miss all of you guys, but the vast majority of myself is really bummed out I only get one Christmas in the field. :p This is seriously so fun. I feel a lot more comfortable talkin to people around the Christmas season, for some reason. I'm still talking about Christ and the Restoration of the Gospel, but...I dunno. THere's something different.
But we talked to so many strangers this week. It was awesome. :p Even if some were grumpy.
I don't have a lot of time to write because I got SO MANY PICTURES *squee!* and had to stare at them. haha. But, I'll share the most important stuff.
Email is so named because a few weeks ago, we knocked on this door, and this crazy guy answered. "You wanna talk about CHrist? Why? What did Jesus ever do for you?! NOthing, that's what! Absolutely nothing, and if you don't know that you're stupid!" Wouldn't even let us talk. Literally, all we could do is quietly testify and leave. When he paused for a breath, we jumped in to say, "Jesus CHrist saved us all. Here's a pamphlet. We'll see you around." It was not a good experience.
So this week, the hermanas gave us a referral of someone they met on the street. "She's SO COOL!" They said, and just gushed about how golden and prepared she was and the miracle of God putting her in their path. We got really excited.
So we drive up to the address they gave us, and we go, "Wait...." It's the SAME DOOR. And we're like, "well, there's a house in the back, maybe they meant that one," we really didn't want to go back to knock on that door again. But it was the same door, and this woman really needed us and wanted us to come by, so we knocked on it. Totally bracing ourselves.
She answered the door and burst into tears. She was so glad to see us and shared so much...she needed this so bad. She asked for a scripture, so we sat and read for a little while. The Spirit was so strong, and she was seriously one of hte most prepared people I've met on my mission.
And the guy was there hanging out, but he didn't have anything to say this time. :p
Moral of the story: You never know who's behind the door. Even if the wrong person answers, don't count it out.
Another cool experience with Mandy! She's really started to get into what we're teaching her, big time. By miracle another friend of hers is investigating the church and has called her to talk all about it, what she's learning and how she feels. We read some of the BoM with her.
REmember her husband? He never sits in on our lessons, but he's often in the background doing something. He wasn't on his phone now, though. At one time in the lesson, he interrupts us (AGAIN) but this tiem he says, "I just gotta say something..." and shares all these really cool experiences and miracles. "I dunno if it's a sign or nothing, if there's anything to your church. It might be GOd telling us it might be true. But I dunno. Anyway." And he was gone before we could answer. :p Haha! 180s are so fun to watch. But you don't see them if you're not persistent.
We had a cool zone conference this week. An elder in our mission is a veteran who can't go back to the army for a while until his legs heal up. He shared some really, really cool stuff. One thing I thought was fun is he told us how much he hates civillians. :p He says in the army, there are no strangers, there's a lot of trust, there's a comraderie and a loyalty. 4 million people in Phoenix and they don't care about each other. He said partly why he served a mission was because he needed that loyalty, and missionaries have that for each other. It's rare in this world.
ANd it got me thinking, I've studied and read a lot about Charity and have really tried to develop that attribute. But I hadn't really thought about loyalty. When a bomb goes off, are we instinctively mroe worried about the man on our right and left than ourselves? I hadn't thought about it, but loyalty is pretty rare. I've learned that no one's a stranger, and I want to keep that after my mission. I want to develop a loyalty to the whole human family and keep that for the rest of my life. Such a cool story.
Anyway, I'm out of time, but I love you guys so much! Thanks for your pryares and support! I'm still happy and healthy, and you guys are the best!! <3
-Sister Stratford
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