Aug. 30, 2010

Hello family! How's life? I love hearing how everyone is, and I'm very grateful for all your letters and emails. To answer your questions, mom, the stuff that we bought for dad's ipod is all still on his computer. If he's deleted any music or conference talks since I put them on before I left, then they won't be there anymore, and he'll have to get them again, otherwise all the applications, like the games and scriptures are all still on his computer, and as soon as he gets the iPod back, and syncs it to the computer, he'll be able to access them all again. Does that answer your question?

This week was crazy busy. The church has changed the focus for the way we teach. I missed the new training at the MTC by about 6 months. But they've started implimenting it here in the mission already, so we'll be ready and already doing it when the missionaries are coming out of the MTC. All the "older" sisters and Zone and District leaders went to a four day training to learn all about it. Then they'll be teaching us for the next six months how to impliment those things. So Sister Silva was gone during the day all week, and I was on exchanges with other junior sisters until the evening when Sis. Silva became available again. We covered multiple areas during the day, which is maybe why I'm so tired. We taught way more lessons because of it. Especially in the evening, because we had been scheduling as many lessons as we could for later in the day when Sis. Silva and I could teach them. And the new training is REALLY making a difference. We're learning how to teach by asking questions, so the investigators really teach themselves. And instead of just teaching the lessons from preach my gospel, we show our investigators how to receive their own revelations on the things we teach. And that's become the focus of everything we do and say with our investigators.

We really noticed the difference with our investigator, Pupe. We haven't been able to teach her for a long time because of her sisters's wedding, but that's over now, so we met with her twice. The first time it went badly. Mostly because it was me and another sister that Pupe is not familiar with. This other sister was trying to be good, but she got a little pushy with Pupe and asked rather pointedly why she wasn't coming to church. Pupe got a little offended, and wanted to know when Sis. Silva was coming back, and when we came back, could we not talk about religion ever agian. She basically wanted to drop us, which really scared me. But we got a return appointment, and made sure that Sis. Silva would be able to come. We asked her to read Alma 32 and I said that we would talk about faith next time, since she's having a hard time developing faith in something other than Buddha. Later in the week, when we went back, we decided to try the new program. So instead of teaching a lesson from Preach My Gospel, we talked about Ch 32 in Alma, and asked her some really good questions. She said that vs 16 really spoke to her, and she felt like she was being yelled at by god. It was AWESOME!!! Here's the verse:

16 Therefore, blessed are they who ^ahumble themselves without being ^bcompelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without ^cstubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe.

She said that she felt like a little child, and that God was telling her to be less stubborn and just listen to us. I know we made huge strides with her. :) The cool thing is that this verse is not why we assigned her the chapter... I didn't even know it was there! We wanted her to read about the experiment of faith, but I know that she got what she needed out of the chapter. :)

We talked about prayer, and how that helps us to recieve our own answers. We asked if she believes in god, and she said yes, but not that he is the creator. We also asked if she has ever prayed to know if Buddhism is right, and she said that she hasn't because she's afraid that He'll tell her that it's not right. Which means that somewhere inside she has doubts about her religion. We backed off about that at this point though, and read the creation from genesis, and asked her to pray about that. We told her that gaining a testimony about this would help her understand how she recieves revelation, since it's different for all of us, and that once she understands how that works for her, she'll better be able to read and understand the Book of Mormon, and anything else we talk about. We assigned her chapter 18 of Alma for tomorrow, since it's the story of King Lamoni being taught about God and the creation.

We also met with Alisha twice this week. Her brother just moved in with her. He's a Pentacostal Minister, and we thought we'd have a real struggle teaching her while he was there. Especially when he invited himself to join the lesson. But he turned out to be a really good asset. He was very warm and open about everything, and asked some really good questions about the restoration. We ran out of time to really get into it, and we're looking forward to this week, when we can talk about the apostasy and restoration some more and really teach about modern day revelation and prophets. It's going to be great!

I simply can't explain how the work here is exploding right now! When I first got here two months ago, we had two investigators, one of whom was lukewarm at best. Now we have six, all of whom are progressing (albeit, at their own pace... lol) and we have 4 or 5 people that we're meeting with this week that, if they continue to progress will become new investigators. Things are really just taking off! I love it! And our whole stake is starting to catch the vision. The work has been stalled here for quite awhile, but the stake presidency is getting the bishops excited, which is really galvanizing the area! I just know that we'll see some huge success really soon from this. It's going to be great. But of course, we could always use more prayers! So keep 'em coming.

I love you all so much and I'm so grateful for all your thoughts and prayers. The one thing I could ask from you is that you continue to pray and especially pray for your own missionary experiences. One of the things I've learned since I've been out here is that you WILL have them, if you pray for them, and as long as you're taking advantage of those opportunities, the Lord will continue to bless you with them. So open your mouth, when the chance comes along, and if you don't get the chance, then give your phone number to the missionaries, and ask if they'd take you along when they have a lesson. I know that it will bless you with the spirit of the work.

That's about all I have for this week. So I guess I'll just sign off here.

I love ya!

Love, Sister Reid