Dear All
Sometimes we look back on a week thinking we haven’t really accomplished much and then we look in our white planning book where we keep track of those we have visited and we see that once again we have met people and put miles on the car. We spent one day with the Elders using their car because they had lots of miles they could use and went over into Kentucky to try and find some of the families over there who we haven’t found yet. We have become quite the detectives and aren’t afraid to ask people on the street about some of our people. We found that one family has moved out of our district but we were told of an aunt of his that would probably have his address. No luck finding her home yet but we won’t give up. That same day we also drove out the complete opposite direction to try and find members. One house no longer exists and no one knows the lady, one lady has moved and no one was home at the other two houses. The Elders put over 100 miles on their car that day with our travels. We are learning why some of the Senior Couples didn’t ever have these families on their weekly reports. It takes a lot of traveling and perseverance to try and find some of these people. I have used whitepages.com and peoplefinder.com to try and locate some of these people and have found a couple that way. In between the morning travels and afternoon adventures we visited a lady who just had surgery and went up to the hospital to get her car for her.
That evening we had an appointment with a brother and sister who are from Utah but have lived here for years. We spent a very enjoyable hour and a half visiting with them and learning their story. They are both pretty shy and are more comfortable around animals than people. At our coordination meeting on Friday our branch mission leader was surprised that we had even gotten into their home because he had been their home teacher for six months and had never gotten in their house. We never know who we can reach that someone else perhaps can’t. That is why we are each so important to this work. You might be the one to reach a person that has turned everyone else away.
Saturday we were again able to attend the temple. We do a branch trip every month that we are in charge of and we usually have 5 or 6 people go. This was a special day because our one young man was going to do baptisms for the first time. His parents and brother took him to the temple even though they couldn’t go in. They wanted to feel the spirit of the temple and be that much a part of his experience. I love our small temple. This session was so crowded because two people were there for the first time and the room was so full and the spirit was so strong.
We went to visit a lady Peggy when we got home and ended up meeting her ex-husband who is also one of our less actives we have been trying to find. He says he still knows the gospel is true but just has a hard time with feeling judged because of his tattoos which he has had since before he joined the church. He has just moved out of one of the apartment buildings where we have tried teaching some people and told us that some of the people tease and taunt anyone we are teaching until they drop us. He said that is what happened to our sweet Anna and he thinks she might let us come again. We are certainly going to try. Satan really does try his hardest when we are finding choice people to teach.
Because our scheduled appointment cancelled on us at the last minute we took the Elders and dropped them off to do some tracting while we went and visited one of our members who just got out of the hospital. When we got to her house she asked us if we had our umbrella because it was supposed to rain. I told her it was in the car but we probably wouldn’t need it. Before we had been at her house long it started to pour and we got a text from the Elders asking us to come and rescue them. We had a hard time getting away from her and her son and our poor Elders stood under some trees trying to stay dry in the deluge that came. We got soaked just running to our car and they had been out in the rain for about 20 minutes. Needless to say that meant a trip home to get dry. It was late enough that we decided to just call it a night and stay home and enjoy the rain from our nice dry home.
One of the less actives whose grandparents are active has a little girl who has MRSA and she asked her granddad if he would find someone to help give her little girl a blessing. They all came to our house before Family Home Evening and we had a really nice visit getting to know her. She believes in the power of the priesthood even though she is totally in-active and doesn’t seem to have much of a desire to change that. If the families of two of our active families would come back to the fold we would have enough people for a small ward. Too many of the second and third generations have fallen away here.
We are doing all we can to help the branch and most days we feel that we are a benefit. Some days it is a lot of traveling with no results except maybe cleaning out the branch list which I guess also helps at least the next Senior Couple.
Be kind to everyone. Share the gospel everywhere because we want everyone to feel the joy. Let your light shine.
Love to all
Elder and Sister Fullmer etc
No comments:
Post a Comment