After my bishop told me long ago that a mission was not for me at the time, I pretty much decided that I would never have the experiences I hear RMs talk about. Turns out my bishop was right because I ended up marrying one of those returned missionaries who told me of even more of those amazing experiences. I loved to hear the stories but was pretty well resigned to the fact that I would never have those experiences even after we put our mission papers in. I was so wrong.
Today I had another one of those "I don't understand because I have never had them" experiences. The difference is that now I do understand because I have had more than one. It seems though that each one eclipses the previous one and so you forget for a while but as Ken says, "It gets in your blood!" He's right! Each one becomes even more precious than the one before. Our first one was great! The second one was awesome! This one was amazing! I have run short of words to really describe the feeling. Ken says too that it is hard to find words to explain a spiritual experience and he is right but I am going to try.
We met a lovely couple right after we arrived here. There is no way you could call it a chance meeting as we have discussed with them many times. We were headed home from a walk, were at our front door and Ken said, "Let's walk down to the nursery." The nursery was just down the street. We had no reason to go there in the middle of winter and with no garden to plant but we went. As we were talking to the nursery man, a car pulled in, a man got out and made a b-line straight to us. He looked right at our name tags, asked us who we were, made some small talk and invited us to his house. We went. This began a really nice friendship.
We were together often and talked of many things including families and politics and religion but we did not feel it was the right thing at the time to become too serious about gospel talks. We got to know them really well. We would call each other occasionally and get together at one another's homes. We found we had a great deal in common. She wrote in our journal that we were of different religions but we believed the same things. That was several months ago when we had them to dinner one night. We invited them to the branch Christmas party and that sparked more curiousity. They felt a closeness to the members and noticed that "no one seemed to have an agenda". In this time, we had numerous experiences that prepared us all for today.
Three weeks ago, on the verge of forgetting about teaching the gospel and possibly the friendship, we took a chance because it seemed we were making no progress in our friendship or the gospel. Ken said, "Will you let us come and 'do what we do'." The husband answered that he thought we had been doing what we do. We told him we wanted to give them formal lessons and they agreed. We started teaching them and giving them more and more church materials. We invited them to church and they came. We kept teaching, they kept coming.
The first week they came to church we were not there and they stayed only for sacrament which was fast meeting. The second week they stayed the whole time. Last Tuesday we asked him to pray (because he hadn't been when we asked before). Last Thursday she told us she was not going to join the church just because someone said she should. Since she was alone that night, we invited her to read and pray about it. Saturday, when Elder Jarvis and a stake visitor went to their home, he prayed aloud in the actual order of prayer. He prayed again Sat. night when we gave another lesson. Sunday they stayed at church and met with the branch president and were the last to leave. Tuesday, we gave them the thought of a target date of either April 5 or 6 as a baptism date. They grabbed me in the hall later and told me when they thought they might be ready. He had counted the days 'til that date. She came to Institute and Tai Chi that night.
Today, we taught them about the role of women in the church, faith and the Godhead in the morning and were invited back to teach them about tithing this afternoon. This afternoon, after the lesson, they informed Ken (Elder Jarvis) that they were going to be baptized on April 5th. We cried! We have worked hard for this day. We have loved and given up and gone again and gotten totally discouraged. We have decided not to try numerous times but then I would get the prompting that we were not to give up. I don't know why, but most of the time it was me saying that we could not quit. I would hear a song and say, "This is for ______." I heard a talk and we took it to them. They listened to it 4 or 5 times. They saw 'Les Miserables' and loved it. Shortly after that, I was looking thru Motab music and found 'Bring Him Home' with Alfie Bowe. They loved it.
We thought we would ask them about April 5 or 6 because of the anniversary of the Savior's birth, the birth of the church and all of that. We threw in the 5th because it was our daughter's birthday and the true Christmas Eve. Turns out, April 5th was the anniversary of her first marriage. They both had previous spouses who died and whom they love. I can't put every sacred thing or every non-coincidental experience down here. Suffice it to say, that for all of us, this was meant to be. We are so glad our assignment was changed. We will soon have 8 converts to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am absolutely sure that He cares deeply for every single one of them and for us. There are no accidents. His plan has purpose if we are willing to follow. Because we followed, our hearts are full to overflowing tonight and for many nights to come.
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