Marvel Not!

August 24, 2015

Family home evening with our members, the office Elders, the APs, Elder Lemperle 

(going home the next day), and our investigator. Too much fun. 

The truck.

Darling Family,

We are a zone meeting around the theme of how change helps us to grow as we introduced this new schedule to all of the other missionaries and Sister Quaye and I got to present the spiritual thought on change. In my personal study I found the perfect scripture, "And the Lord said unto me: Marvel not that all mankind, yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters; And thus they become new creatures; and unless they do this, they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God," (Mosiah 27:25-26). I love that the Lord plainly tells us to "marvel not" that we need to change. Sometimes when we are chastened or asked to change we find it hard to do, but we are imperfect mortals. Of course we need to change! No unchanged thing can enter the kingdom of God!

This week I have been studying the importance of the Book of Mormon and my testimony has grown so much. I am so grateful for that book. The Bible helps us to understand the events and the Book of Mormon helps us to understand how those events apply to us personally. I am so grateful that I have this tool to more fully understand the Atonement and the Fall--the pure love of God. As a result of my studies, I seemed to testify of the Book of Mormon a lot this week and use it in finding and it felt so good.

This new schedule has literally doubled our lessons. It's crazy how a change of one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening can make a difference. We are still trying to find solid people that will progress but just the fact that we are teaching anyone at all is the biggest blessing. I just fall down on my knees every day and thank Heavenly Father. There is nothing I have done to merit these blessings, and yet they are coming.

We found a couple of very interesting people this week. One is called Makai and he is the friend of one of our investigators. As we taught our investigator, we gave him a Book of Mormon just to look through and he was intently reading the whole lesson. It reminded me of my thoughts in Blantyre--what light shines forth from those pages when someone opens it for the first time. They are peaking into their eternal potential, if they will but accept it, read it, and use it. I am excited to see where he goes. He pretty much wants to meet with us everyday this week.

We also met an old man called Morgan Muti. He is a little bit crazy and also very intelligent. He already loves the Book of Mormon, too, and he went around to all of his neighbors telling them about us and wondering if they would like to meet with us. 

We also found quite a few families but most of them rejected us after "showing interest" in the first lesson. We will keep trying. Families are my favorite!

On Sunday we put together a ward choir and sang Hymn #70, "Sing Praise To Him". I had never heard of it until we learned it together but it has become one of my favorite hymns. Look it up.

In other news:

-One of our less actives hid in her house as we knocked at the door. The guard kept telling us that she was inside sleeping so we went around knocking on the windows to try to wake her up. It turns out she was just hiding from us...awkward.

-The power outages continue and I've decided to call this "the great apostasy" because of the "darkness" and "loss of power". Yeah, missionary humor. It's the best.

-Since our mirror got stolen we have traded our tiny carolla in for a truck (see picture). I can't even describe the irony of us driving around in this old, LOUD, manual, clunky truck and then we get out in our skirts with out scriptures to go help people feel the Spirit. I think I'm being converted to trucks.

Love you! Have a wonderful week,

Sister Proctor