Hastening the Work: When All Else Fails, Just Love!

This week was my companion's birthday. We went over to a member family's home in our area. They are deaf so they taught us the "Happy Birthday" song in sign language than we sang to her in America Sign Language (ASL).  It was really fun!  Later, we enjoyed a nice cake.

Our English ward is the official deaf ward in the area, so during church, there is an ASL translator.  It's super fun to watch during meetings.

I gave a talk on Hastening the Work in the English Ward.  It was short and sweet, and went really well.  I shared Alma 13:24 and talked about how we have seen evidence of God preparing the hearts of his children.  For example, God uses the members to prepare his children - a few weeks ago, we knocked on the door of one house and the people who answered the door were super excited to see us because they had known several members of the church throughout their lives. They immediately let us in, gave us Cheetos, Cheez-Its, fruit snacks, trail mix, and water.  It kept us going for the next week!  We were able to talk to them about the Restoration and they were touched by the message.

Then, I talked about what we needed to do to prepare ourselves to take part in this work.

1) We need to start with ourselves - it's like personal study hour for missionaries

2) We need to help out our families - it's like companionship study for missionaries

3) We need to help out others - it's like when missionaries go out to work each day

Three other missionaries and the Ward Mission Leader also spoke.

A success we had this week:

We stopped by to visit a family, within the first five minutes we were "reprimanded" for asking too many questions.  Things weren't looking so great, but we decided to just listen to them for a while.  The tension eased, then we sang them a song and shared a scripture with them.  We ended with a prayer and told them we loved them. The lady of the house responded that she loved us, too. She also gave us some delicious cookies and little pies to take with us as we walked out the door.  Mission Accomplished.

Moral of the Story: When all else fails, just love.