Another week has come and gone and I'm so excited to hear that T got baptized! We were praying that everything would get situated for his baptism and I'm so glad that they did.
This
past week has been a little harder than the previous. Right before I
got here, they baptized all of their progressing investigators, so other
than our investigator E who will hopefully get baptized this
weekend, we have none. So this past week, we've spent a lot of time just
finding and teaching. We're kind of at the stand still where we've
taught several families for weeks, yet they just won't come to church.
That's where all the lines are drawn with investigators, they have to
make the decision to actually come to church, because without it,
there's no progress. It's what we see happen over and over again,
they'll read, they'll pray, they'll have a testimony that it's true,
they just won't use that testimony and exercise their faith to go to
church, but we're not giving up. We're just trying our best and working
even harder to find and prepare those for baptism.
This
past week has been a little frustrating and just a little
heart-wrenching. We've been teaching and teaching and teaching, and then
at church yesterday we had no one. Not one investigator and it makes
me look back at myself and think what am I missing? what is missing in
our lessons? how can I help them more effectively to have that desire to
go to church? or see the importance of it? In trainings they always say
to not stress over the things that you can't control. We can't control
other's agency, to listen to us or to keep commitments and we can't force
them to come to church. But then I think, we can control the lessons. We
can control if we teach according to spirit and promptings. We can
control so many things, and I feel like I'm lacking something. It's
something that's just been on my mind this past week, so this week I've made it a goal to focus on learning to recognize the promptings of the
spirit, to become more familiar with how the spirit talks to me, and how I
can more fully follow those promptings. Even this morning I read the
talk from President Monson from October 2013 conference, and he gave
story after story of him following the promptings of the spirit and the
miracles that happened because of it. I just started tearing up because I
felt the spirit so strongly. I want that. President Lopez always says,"Don't doubt that the spirit is not with you. It's always there. Most of
the time, we just don't recognize it." This week I want to recognize
it and I want to teach in such a way that those investigators can't help
but feel the power of my testimony and the truthfulness of our
message.
This
past week has still been overcast all week. It's been so nice. I feel
like I'm back in Washington because it's just been cloudy and gloomy,
but not hot. I haven't sweated allll week. The past two weeks even. It's
been amazing and so nice. I hope it stays.
On
Saturday, we had a CSP! We cleaned the outside of school in one of our
Baranggay's! We got all dirty pulling weeds, etc. and it reminded me of
Dad :) Later that night they had the Philippines Area Broadcast where
they introduced the 2014 Area goals. They're the same as last year
except one.
1. Strengthen Families
2. Save the Rising Generation
3. Establish the Church
4. Share the Gospel and Rescue the One
I love you all!
xoxoxo,
Sister Fitzgerald
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