Everything this past week went fairly well. Sister O and I have three investigators that we are hoping to put on date for baptism this week as well. Their names are P, D, and T. P and D (you have heard about them before) are cousins and were referred by a less active member (E) that Sister O had taught. E is now active and pursuing member missionary work. D and P also have family members that are now going to be taking the discussions with them. today is supposed to be the first appointment, so we are looking forward to hearing from them both on how it went.
T is a single mother of 2 and she is really struggling financially. She  has been looking into the church for a while now, and before we talked with her, she had asked some of her friends to send the missionaries over, but they never did. T acted on her own and found mormon.org where she ordered her own Book of Mormon and met us in chat. The talk that we had with her then was amazing, but when we called her to follow up it was even better. We had challenged her to pray while we were on chat and we also taught her how we pray. When she was on the phone with us she told us that she has been praying every day since we had chatted with her.
T was having a bit of a hard time though because the missionaries had not yet come and we had not been able to send them over yet because she hadn't given us her address when we were on chat with her. However, when we phoned her she gave us her address and so we sent the request. When we sent the request, Sister O testified to her that God is mindful of her prayers and that He really wants a relationship with her. She told T that the missionaries would be over really soon and she was completely right. No sooner did Sister O testify of this then T spotted the Elders  riding their bikes outside her house. What happened next was amazing. T ran outside (with us still on the phone) and introduced herself to the missionaries. It was so incredible to see how much God really cares for us. The Elders, T, Sister O and I had ha three way conversation. Sister O and I told the Elders how important T is to us and how prepared she is to hear the gospel. As this was happening, the Spirit in the room went wild! t ended up taking the first discussion with the Elders that night and she emailed us afterward and told us how excited she is to learn more.
God truly has people who are really prepared to listen to the gospel, so I think that it is very important for each of us to be prepared to hear the Holy ghost, act and follow up on our investigators' progress. Even though we cannot see them, and in many cases even imagine accurately how these people are feeling, God knows. Heavenly Father knows everything there is to know about us, and through the Spirit He will let us know what we need to say, if only we are worthy and listen. I think that it is very important for every one, because it does not matter if we are a missionary or not, we can still change someone's life. There are so many opportunities to teach, help or serve others that pass us by and we can not let them.
So, as I mentioned last time, Elder Holland came and spoke with us. It was actually on Wednesday last week because that is when we have Relief Society. We don not have time to have anything but the Sacrament on Sunday because we have to have sisters on the square as soon as it opens for the day! Elder Holland's lesson was amazing. It kinda felt like an institute class but with a general authority. He was so funny as well as spiritual. I always forget that general authorities are real people as ewll because we only really see them at conference. He made sure everyone was very engaged in the lesson. When a sister got one question right, he pointed to her and said that she deserved a  cookie after class and a star on her forehead. He talked about how important the Book of Mormon is in our lives and how even in the first chapter it shows the entire pattern of God's prophets. Here is his list that he made on the white board:
Prophet - prays, vision, sees brightness, Savior and /or other heavenly beings speak, they act on what they are told to do, they are rejected by the world.
This is the pattern of Joseph Smith, Lehi and almost every other prophet in the scriptures. He said that, "none of us understand yet the full importance and impact of the Book of Mormon. You don't understand, I don't understand, President Monson doesn't, well, I hesitate to say if he does not understand, because I don't know with him, hahaha. It is so important to study the Book of Mormon every day because if we do not have a solid testimony of it, we are in trouble.
Temple Square is really an amazing mission. When I got the call I thought that it would be mostly a tour mission, but it is not. We teach people not only on Temple Square, but we are the people who answer the chats and phone calls when people call mormon.org. Those pass-along cards work! You would be surprised to see how many people call in every day because of pass-along cards. There is another phone call or chat practically every second of the day! It is really cool because we teach people from all around the world. Some of my investigators live in Japan, Africa, Sweden and everywhere and anywhere. Many of the places where we teach are places that do not have missionaries yet because they are not allowed in the countries or it is too dangerous. I love my mission!
Thanks everyone for the letters. I hope everything made sense ;)
Love,
Sister Lybbert