Good Morning Independant souls!

I love you all so much!  This week was such a refiners fire, but it ended up really fireing me up for more work, if that makes sense?! 🙂  You know, what?  ROD HAMPTON HAS A BAPTISMAL DATE for August 18th now!  😀 😀 😀  Listen to how cute he is.  Okay, so He is a little bit mentally handicapped because he has brain damage, epilepsy, and had a cut spinal cord from a car accident.  But He says the most profound things during our lessons.  We call them “Rodisms.”  He says, whenever you don’t know where to go…go to the cross and turn right. 😉  And He says whenever people make fun of him sometimes He thinks to himself, “Why me?” and then immediately afterwards he says…”Why NOT me?  I can handle this with God’s help!” 

So we were teaching him about how we lived with Heavenly Father as spirits before we came to Earth and we read Jeramiah 1:4-5 outloud to him that says, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the WOMB I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” 

Then he got a really confused look on his face and said, “Look, I’m really trying hard to try and think about changing my ways of thinking to how Mormons think and how I think….and He started saying how He just can’t believe that.  So we tried going into more details about the Pre-Earth Life, and then we asked Him what was confusing to him.  And he said, “You’re saying that God created us out of the MOON??”  Oooo boy. 🙂  With my high pitched voice and his brain damage it makes some really interesting lessons. 🙂  We got that settled pretty quickly when we clarified the word WOMB–NOT MOON!! 🙂  But He was really excited to know that God knew him before Earth and he said, “That’s like Putting 2 and 2 together and making 4! But I never knew how to get to 4!”  People are delighted to know the reason God loves us so much is because HE LIVED WITH US FOR A REALLY LONG TIME BEFORE WE GOT HERE!! LOVE THAT DOCTRINE!!! So much. 😉 🙂 🙂

Okay, then Sis. Edwards took him to a 4th of July Party. He had a lot of fun! A girl had a grand mal seizure there and It scared me to death…I was glad to see a reminder of how blessed I am to be on a mission still because I haven’t had any seizures!!! I thank Heaven every day for that!! 🙂 🙂  A few days later when He came to Church, He thought he over heard a few girls making fun of him.  So he told us he was never coming back.  Gaaaaaah!  Nooooo!! so we went over there and with the Help of the Spirit we told him about the Atonement of Christ and His precious live he lived.  He finally said, “Jesus Forgave and Forgot.  I can do that too.  But I don’t think I can forget for a while.” Aww.  Then we had a prayer and His prayers are beautiful!  He asked for forgiveness and thanked God for reminding Him things that he forgot about Christ. 🙂 🙂 🙂  That was a special lesson.

Almost every stranger we ask for referrals for says, “umm…You aren’t going to find much people here who will listen to you.  Do you know how religious Pella is already? You might as well try missionarying some place else.”  We heard that SOOO many times this transfer.  It’s getting kind of discouraging…We struggled finding investigators this week,and a lot of our old ones dropped us… but we had INCREDIBLE potentials!!  This lady was wearing a tree necklace and she called it “The Living Tree.”  And so we got excited and showed her in the BOM where it talks about the Tree of Life and How it compares to the Love of God and she started tearing up!  We gave her a BOM to read and she said she’d read it.  Can’t wait to follow up with her!!  Then…I’m going to start a new paragraph for this story because it’s so cool!!!

THE SPIRIT TOLD US TO CALL BROTHER CUPPLES AND ASK HIM if He knew anyone from Pella who we could teach.  He lives about 20 mins away in Knoxville, but he used to be the Branch Mission President TEN YEARS AGO!!!.  So he said, “Yes.  I do actually!  ABOUT 10 years ago, this shy young man who was about 5’9, really skinny, and had red hair took discussions.  I will drive out to his house and get his address for you!!!!!”  So he gave it to us, and we went over and an older man came to the door.  He was so nice!  He told us he had a son who lives in Rooseville, California who’s a Mormon!  We got so excited and told him about Bro.  Cupples sending us over to his house to see if his son still lived there. He said, “Yeah!  He married a Mormon about 8 years ago, and he got baptised! He has 2 kids now.  He’s been talking to me about the church, and I think It’s time that I start learning about it!! Why don’t you come over Tuesday at 4:00!!!”

WOOOOOOAWOOOOOOOHWOOOOHLAKSOIJUE!!!!!  We were completely shocked!  Sis. Cannon was like, “Did that just happen??!!”  So we followed up with Bro. Cupples and he was overjoyed!  He said, “I’ve never known I could be an impact on bringing someone to the gospel.  I have really struggled with my testimony lately and that just lit my fire!! Thank you for telling me that.  I am going to start being a better person now.”  WOAH.  I LOVE THE SPIRIT SO MUCH.  I LOVE THE ATONEMENT AND WHAT IT DOES TO PEOPLE!!! I LOVE HOW MISSIONARY WORK MAKES TESTIMONIES STRONGER!!!! I LOVE HOW MUCH MISSIONARY WORK STILL NEEDS TO BE DONE.

THE GOSPEL WILL BRING ANYONE OUT OF THE DARK TUNNELS OF DESPAIR!! Hope is always in the distance!  Peace comes through your righteousness, but it is always available through prayer because of Christ’s atonement!!!

Thanks for tuning in!!  LOve YOU ALL!!!

ONE HAPPY MISSIONARY.

SISTER STEPHANIE TOBIAS 🙂 🙂 🙂