Week 77

September 13-19, 2017
Day 539-546
Week 2 in Kingsbridge

This week has been pretty good! Last week’s Pday it was raining again, so we chilled inside most of the time. We had a couple appointments set that evening but they fell through.

Thursday and Friday were both pretty mellow days, we had weekly planning and made a list of people, both Investigators and members and made a plan for each of them. We called a lot of people and set appointments.

Since I’ve come to this area we have received so many referrals, at least 2 each day. So we’ve been doing a lot of calling and look ups to find/get in contact with these people. Some of them ended up being inaccurate information so we couldn’t get in touch with a few of them but we have got in contact with a good number of them and have appointments set.

Saturday we had an appointment around 11 with a referral we got the other day. His name is Z, he is from Africa; He’s a super cool guy and is pretty knowledgeable when it comes to religion; he studied theology in school so he just wanted to meet with us to get information from a “direct source”. We talked about some of the questions he had and taught the Restoration. He’s a very nice guy, but in our first visit him we haven’t found his intent level; if he’s just curious or if he’s actually looking for answers. We gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and told him we would bring a French copy next time. We set an appointment with him for 2 weeks from now because of his work schedule.

Some time in the afternoon we met with a member, Brother R, he’s blind (but I think only partially). We visited with him for a little while and got to know him a bit, he’s 93 years old, I guess because of his vision he doesn’t come to church, so we take him the sacrament. Also, since he can’t read, we came prepared and brought him the Book of Mormon CDs so he could listen to them.

Sunday’s are pretty nice here in KB (Kingsbridge). We have church at 1:30pm so we get up, get ready, we can have all of our studies and planning done and then have lunch and get to the church around 12:30pm for choir practice and then we are ready for sacrament at 1:30. Today in 3rd hour no one knew if anyone was teaching… so Elder Patterson volunteered us and we led the discussion on the topic “The Power of the Book of Mormon”. It was a really sweet spiritual discussion everyone was involved and participated and it was so cool to hear the thoughts and input from everyone. Church got out at 4:30pm and we headed home for dinner.

Around 6 we were out and heading to a member’s home, Brother M. We visited with him for a bit. He had text us this morning saying he wouldn’t be making it to church today and asked if we could stop by. So we came by and he just poured out everything that he was going through right now… it was pretty crazy. (We met with him last week for a bit and so we already had some background on his situation) we were like, how can we help? He asked us to pray for him and so before we left we said a prayer.

Before heading home, we went and took the sacrament to Brother R. Our visit with him was brief but great!

We had district meeting Monday morning, which was great, Sister Muti led a discussion on “We invite, they commit, we follow up.” Afterward we went to the scriptures and read some verses together and discussed it. Then we split up into companionship’s and planned for an Investigator who is progressing and what invitation we feel they need to strengthen their faith.

After district meeting Elder Patterson and I went home for lunch then went out and looked up some people in Area Book. While looking up people and whether anyone answered or not we would then knock the doors around.

After getting in contact with one of the guys we were looking for we knocked a neighboring door, we met Tom. Tom is an older man; he very slowly came to the door with his body hunched over in what looked like the most uncomfortable way… We introduced ourselves and continued to share a message with him; he stopped us and told us he wasn’t interested in a message. I asked if there was anything we could do for him, he said pray for me. I asked what specifically I could pray for, he said “my back, I have scoliosis…” I asked how long it had been a challenge in his life, he said, “it’s always been a problem”… we bowed our heads and I offered the prayer. We prayed with a man that turned us down when we tried to share a message with him, but as we showed interest in him and a desire to serve him his countenance changed. It wasn’t some miraculous thing, but it was one of those moments where the Spirit was present, Elder Patterson was led to a door and the words that were said during that interaction were true and I believe Tom felt that.

We came home for dinner and also made some phone calls to more referrals we had received that morning! This is the Lords work, and it is busy.

Tuesday morning we had Zone conference it started at 9am and got over at 4pm. It was good meeting to start; nothing really caught my attention or anything for a while… not till the end. An experience President Smith felt to share brought the Spirit strong. An Elder in the room had received an email a few months ago from a friend he hadn’t been in contact with for a while now. She expressed to him her feelings and current life circumstance. He invited her to attend church with her older brother in Utah; where she had planned to go to school to change up her life, she accepted his invitation. (She isn’t a member of the church but her brother is a convert and recently returned missionary) In her visit to the church she met the missionaries, they had talked for a bit and had set an appointment with her shortly after. This Elder, a little while later received another email from this girl saying that she had a wonderful experience at church and was meeting with the missionaries and that she has committed to be baptized and her date would be sometime in October. She expressed in another email shortly after that she has received an answer to her prayers and desired to be baptized sooner. Her date was moved to a more recent day and she was baptized. Projected on the wall in front of us was a picture of this girl in white just before her baptism. What a beautiful and special moment for her and for this Elder. Seeing this brought feelings and memories to my mind of when Miranda had been baptized, along with other friends like Sydney and Drue years prior to serving my mission who had committed to their Heavenly Father that they were ready and willing to follow Him, what beautiful memories came back to my mind along with the feelings I had during each of these special moments that I was blessed to be apart of.

As this was being shared President also felt to share an experience of his own while with his parents recently. His mother, who isn’t originally from this country, found missionaries when she was a young girl. His mother was baptized at 11 years old and that has impacted his life tremendously. Up on the wall, he put up a picture of he and his wife with his parents at the Hartford Connecticut temple, which is a very special place to me. Having these experiences shared, these pictures displayed, and memories filling my mind allowed the Spirit to fill my heart and soul. It was a great and wonderful meeting, soon after these experiences were shared; I along with many others bore our testimonies of what we’ve felt today.

When the meeting ended we made our way to the doors to head home and watched the rain pour outside. The train station wasn’t far, so we left and quickly walked to the train. We headed home, changed out of our wet suits and into dry clothes; we had dinner and ended the night by meeting with IK and playing basketball.

Patience. Love. Faith
Much love,

Elder Newbold