Live by Your Covenants

August 17, 2015

All the STLs out to Chinese with President and Sister Erickson.

Sister Rasband and I. Shout out to all the Lone Peakers!

Ma Frimpong and me. Love this lady.

My beautiful companion and I

Amon--the first one to Mormon Helping Hands. So proud of him.

All the Elders braiing at the mission home

Darling Family,

We had our two-day mission leadership council this week and it was so wonderful. I feel so blessed to still be a part of it and to council with such spiritual giants. It is always fun to see the leaders throughout the whole mission because all of them have become my good friends. I was reunited with Sister Dlamini and Sister Frimpong and we were the happiest children around. 

I can't really describe MLC to you accurately and capture the Spirit of those meetings but they were spectacular. I felt very chastened and desirous to become a better missionary, leader, covenant-keeper, and saint. Sister Erickson taught us about covenants and she said, "Live by your covenants, not by your circumstances." In all of these meetings I feel that I am not only building who I am now but I am building who I will be in the future, post-mission. 

President opened MLC with talking about his prayers. He told us that when he really wants to receive revelation that he kneels down, says, "Dear Father in Heaven," and then waits in silence for a response. A response always comes. In that silent moment I listened for what God wanted me to hear. His voice was heard and I felt his immense trust in all of us young, weak missionaries trying our best to bless this mission.

The biggest change from MLC is that we are changing the mission schedule. Because of safety, we have been leaving 9am and coming home at 6pm my entire mission but now we are adding an hour in the morning and an hour (or if you have an appointment two hours) in the evening. That will definitely change the dimension of our teaching pools because now we can see fathers and their families when they are home from work in the evening. It is going to take a lot of faith to proselyte in the dark but I know that is from Heavenly Father and I'm ready to take it on.

Funny enough, even though we missed two days in the area we had more lessons than other weeks. It was a week full of miracles! I am so incredibly grateful for every tiny blessing Heavenly Father is sending our way. At one point we had a fall through and we prayed to know who we needed to see and as we opened our eyes I said, "Chipoya" and Sister Quaye said, "Simooya". They are both members. We laughed that their names rhymed and decided to pray again because we obviously didn't quite hear the Spirit right. We ended up going to see the Chipoyas who we've never found at home and they were there! And we had the sweetest lesson with them on family history. And Sister Chipoya's name in Maurine so I call he my Zambian mom :)

We had Mormon Helping Hands this weekend and guess who was the first person to show up. Our investigator Amon. Powerful. I don't think he knew what he was getting into. We cleaned this market for over 4 hours in the heat and it was mostly chibuku (alcohol) cartons we were picking up. It reminded me of that quote from either Joseph Smith or Brigham Young that says something along the lines of, "If Mormons end up being wrong and [another religion] is right and all the Mormons go to hell then we will overthrow Satan and make it a beautiful place." We certainly overthrew the drunk men and made their hang out spot a bit more beautiful!

In other news:

-My recent convert from Lilongwe, Chisomo Brighton, just got his mission call to Cape Town!! I can't believe I've been out long enough for an RC to head out on mission. 

-All of the Relief Society sisters at church were discussing how no one visits each other and one said, "The only people that visit me are the sister missionaries." Then one by one each sister said, "Me too!" It made me happy that we had visited so many of them. We are making a difference!

-A former investigator is still going to the Catholic church but is paying tithing at our church? Still hope?

Love you all! Have a fantastic week!

Sister Proctor