Bryndee Down South: Of Misfortunes And Miracles.

Happy P day to y’all!

This has been a crazy, full week. The highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Seriously, almost everything good that could possibly happen happened. Then again, everything really bad happened too. Phew. Exhausting just thinking about it.

The week kicked off with zone conference. Basically, they taught us to be healthy and well-adjusted human beingsJ the mission doctor came and talked to us, and needless to say, I bought a ridiculous amount of produce today…..

President Holm gave his standby talk on “F words” (the good kind!J) There’s 4 F words that he decided when he was young would govern his life. First is faith, and the foundation that it was built on. The second was family, and complete fidelity to that. Then, after a “27 mile gap” was finance and frugality, and finally fitness. A focus on these four F words gives us one of the very best F words… Freedom. He told us that “we love in the land of the free and the home of the brave, where there are not many free, and there’s not many brave.” He counseled that if you’re struggling with any of those things, or any other F words (fear…. Failure….) you need to fix one of three things: you’re personal mentality, your personal discipline, or your methods of achieving either one. He talked about how each one of us sees life through a window, and sometimes we let people write things on that window that simply aren’t true. Sometimes we write those things ourselves… things like “I can’t….” Or “I’m not ______enough” or “I can do ____ but not ___.” We go through life, looking at it through those paradigms, and putting limits on ourselves. He then bluntly said “If my father is the king of kings, who am I to think small?!? Who am I to say I can’t?!?” If we can master that belief window, and erase the things thereon, we can conquer the world J it was a super cool training J

I also had a pretty cool spiritual affirmation, as I was sitting in that meeting. I was thinking last week, and feeling kind of bad about the way I trained S. Belyea. There was A LOT of things I could have done a lot better, things I’ve been working on with S. McNeece. I couldn’t get it out of my head that I had gone and messed up someone’s mission, maybe someone’s life, because I had accidentally slacked on something.

Anyways, P. Holm called on S. Belyea to share an experience where she had literally screeched to a halt on her bike, almost crashing and killing herself, to talk to someone on the street. The spirit prompted me, and said, “That’s the missionary you trained…. See? You did just fine. Now, go and do better.” It was a wonderful experience J

So, I would tell you about our investigators, buuuuttt……… They all dropped us this week. Every single person we had on date for baptism was anti-ed. Awesome…..

But. One of our Eternigators finally came to church!!! :D plus, another 4 people that we had no idea were coming! They just up and decided to show up. It was a miracle! I’ve seriously never had so many investigators at sacrament meeting. (And did they pick a good Sunday to come! Hooray for the primary program!)

So, for a final story, how ‘bout a cool miracle? We were going to go see a part-member family that we hadn’t been able to catch, that lived on Tucker Street. We accidentally drove past the house, so we decided to just start at the beginning of the street and knock our way down. First house…. Not interested. We left a card. #2…. Not home. #3…. Not home. #4…. Not home. We were walking down the driveway to move on to the next house, and someone comes out of house #1 and starts walking towards us (this is weird…. Normally people run away from us as soon as they see the nametags…. But this guy was definitely heading for us.) He pulls the card out of his pocket, and says “did y’all leave this with my sister?”

“Mmm…. Yes, We did….?”

“Did President Collins send you?”

President Collins? Is this guy a member?

“Uhh, nope. We were just proselyting. Are you a member of the church?”

“No, but my girlfriend is. I’ve actually been reading the book of Mormon, and I’m interested in learning more about your church. President Collins from Augusta said he would send you guys over.”

Jaw. Dropped. It was seriously so cool. I felt like I was living in the ensign.

Funny thing was, we weren’t even planning on being in that part of our area! We were planning on biking around the northernmost part, but it started pouring. We pretty much went there on a whim.

God is so great.

Welp, I hope y’all are having a great week, and sharing the gospel like crazy!

Y’all have a blessed week!

Sister Derrick