The Final Countdown

Well the last few weeks of the mission is upon me.  What can I say other than the fact that I just keeping working hard and serving the Lord with all my heart, might, mind, and strength.  Just like always.  It is getting ridiculously near though.  Some days do seem to drag on though.  I think the fact that I didn't get transferred for my last transfer is making it go a bet longer.  Since I've already been here for 4 months and just keep working with the same people over and over, it does get a bit tedious at times.  So yeah, all the people we've been working with still are showing no signs of progression really.  The new ones are the exciting ones of late.  We did come close to making a big step with Marion yesterday, but it failed.  We had the Clarkes invite him over for dinner with us, which we go to every Sunday night, and we had a fantastic lesson planned and if he had been able to hear the testimonies of all the Clarke family, there would have been no denying the spirit.  that's where we're at with him.  We need him to feel the spirit on his own.  The only time he feels it is when we come over, but we need him to be feeling it more than that, ie. read the book of Mormon, come to church, or come to a member's house for dinner.  But he's not doing any of those at the moment.  The reason that he gave brother Clarke for not wanting to come to dinner was because he felt too ashamed to come to his house.  I don't know what he meant by that, but we were very disappointed.  We haven't had any progress with the Kumars or Carlo lately either.  The Kumars are just too busy, and Carlo is like he's taking steps backwards instead of forward.  It's OK to take an occasional step back, everybody does, but it's how many steps forward you take after that step back that matter, and he's not doing any. 

 

We did have a miracle happen this week.  I just love miracles.  So to kind of give you a background of what happened, we met this lady named Tammy whilst tracting about 3 or 4 weeks ago, maybe even 5.  We also met this lady named Norita whilst tracting about 6 weeks ago, on the opposite side of town.  We hadn't really seen either of them since we met them tracting because they were proving really hard to catch at home.  Well about 2 weeks ago we were teaching this investigator named Azizah (who we found as a referral from a less active member named Roberta) and she gave us the referral of Tammy.  Well we tried to keep seeing Tammy, but never anybody home.  But one day she called us up randomly and asked us if we could give her a hand with her yard.  We were more than happy to of course and when we went around on Tuesday to do that, lo and behold, we meet Norita there.  She was watching the kids while Tammy was at work.  We did the service, which really took it out of us that day as it was really hot, and they left while we were working, but we did text Tammy and find out if we could come again on Thursday so that we could try to sit down with her and teach her.  Well we went again on Thursday and taught her, but she wasn't really paying much attention, she was distracted by the kids most of the time and getting up and down doing stuff, however, Norita was there and she got right into the lesson.  She was telling us all about her childhood and how religion played a roll in her life.  She says that she was forced into religion, almost scared into religion when she was young, and she didn't feel she was right.  She's from Torres Strait Island and she's about 30 years old now.  We taught a bit of the restoration and left each of them with a book of Mormon with a return appointment to come back next week and teach them more.  We didn't really think heaps of it, but we were wrong to do so.  It's amazing the power the Book of Mormon has, (and I can't believe how true it is!! but I'll come back to that).  Well anyways, Norita came to church!  She walked in right as the final speaker was getting up to speak and one of the members had to come tell us that we had an investigator there because we were sitting near the front and she walked in the back.  She stayed for all of church though and I think she really enjoyed it.  She said that she read the first few chapters of the book of Mormon and so she wanted to come check us out.  How great is that!  Miracles baby!  "Has God ceased to be a God of miracles? I say unto you, NAY!"  So we'll see how far this one goes, but hopefully it goes very far.  This could be the baptismal date before I go home that I've been praying for!  We'll just wait and see. 

 

Well yeah, that's about it for this week.  Only 4 left!  Love you all! See you soon!

 

Much love,

Elder Tanner