March 11,
2013
Hello!
So not too much happened this week. We watched a lighting storm that was huge and to the north of us. We watched it for like 20 minutes. Lake Powell thunder storms got nothing on these storms! holy crap! Rainy season starts in April or May so pretty soon, I’ll be getting boots here in the near future, I hope!
My first transfer is over, but we still haven’t found out who is leaving and who is going. As far as me and my companion go, we'll both stay in Doe Community for this transfer. We should know transfer news sometime tonight and then people will come/go tomorrow. We're not sure what’s going on.
The man that we gave a blessing to to be able to walk isn’t baptized yet because he isn’t married and he’s living with his woman or wife or whatever you think that would be. Once he gets married he will be baptized. We had a similar situation to this with a 65 year old man, but we didn’t find out that he wasn’t married until he was interviewed for baptism. That was last Sunday and we came on Tuesday to follow up and explain why he wasn’t able to be baptized. We were talking and he said his brother left earlier that morning with the dowry (men have to pay the girls family to be able to marry her. about $50 US which is a ton of money here, this is the traditional marriage). He was baptized on Saturday. After the baptisms were done, we had a few of the converts bear their testimonies. Daniel got up and bore his testimony. He talked about how we started teaching him. We were walking to another appointment and he just called us over and wanted to be baptized. We talked small and saw that he was serious about it. We came back plenty times over the next couple weeks and taught him. It also seemed like every time he came he had some other person there for us to talk to. He is bringing his 3 small kids to church with him, they are probably going to be baptized on March 30th. He is an amazing old man.
Elder Finau (District Leader) taught us about something that he made up. It’s called F.I.V.E., I don’t think I talked about this over email. It stands for Finding Inspirational Verses for Enjoyment. You randomly open the scriptures and the first verse you look at, you read it and think. There have been plenty of times where I have found verses that go along with a lesson I will be teaching either that day or the next day. I have found such good verses, verses that I have read before but haven’t had an impact. Being a missionary makes me have a different mindset. It’s been fun to read the scriptures. I still don’t like reading though.
Prayer. I was asked the question at a district meeting about this. How do we teach prayer? Do we just say it’s how we talk to Heavenly Father? No, we should take more time with this. One way that I have started to teach people about prayer, and how God answers our prayers, when we have a question, is this, it’s like a phone call. You don’t just talk talk talk talk and hang up. You talk and then listen. When you are listening, you recognize the feelings of your heart, the thoughts of your mind, it’s during this small time that we get personal revelation, we get answers to our prayers. It’s something that I do after every personal prayer. I offer the prayer and when I am done, I wait. I focus on these feelings and thoughts. Sometimes I get answers, sometimes I don’t. Heavenly Father acts on his own time but he will answer the questions we ask Him. Something to think about.
Everything in Liberia is sweet!! The work is awesome!
I love everyone back home! I miss everyone too!
Elder Park
The White African
T.I.A.
So not too much happened this week. We watched a lighting storm that was huge and to the north of us. We watched it for like 20 minutes. Lake Powell thunder storms got nothing on these storms! holy crap! Rainy season starts in April or May so pretty soon, I’ll be getting boots here in the near future, I hope!
My first transfer is over, but we still haven’t found out who is leaving and who is going. As far as me and my companion go, we'll both stay in Doe Community for this transfer. We should know transfer news sometime tonight and then people will come/go tomorrow. We're not sure what’s going on.
The man that we gave a blessing to to be able to walk isn’t baptized yet because he isn’t married and he’s living with his woman or wife or whatever you think that would be. Once he gets married he will be baptized. We had a similar situation to this with a 65 year old man, but we didn’t find out that he wasn’t married until he was interviewed for baptism. That was last Sunday and we came on Tuesday to follow up and explain why he wasn’t able to be baptized. We were talking and he said his brother left earlier that morning with the dowry (men have to pay the girls family to be able to marry her. about $50 US which is a ton of money here, this is the traditional marriage). He was baptized on Saturday. After the baptisms were done, we had a few of the converts bear their testimonies. Daniel got up and bore his testimony. He talked about how we started teaching him. We were walking to another appointment and he just called us over and wanted to be baptized. We talked small and saw that he was serious about it. We came back plenty times over the next couple weeks and taught him. It also seemed like every time he came he had some other person there for us to talk to. He is bringing his 3 small kids to church with him, they are probably going to be baptized on March 30th. He is an amazing old man.
Elder Finau (District Leader) taught us about something that he made up. It’s called F.I.V.E., I don’t think I talked about this over email. It stands for Finding Inspirational Verses for Enjoyment. You randomly open the scriptures and the first verse you look at, you read it and think. There have been plenty of times where I have found verses that go along with a lesson I will be teaching either that day or the next day. I have found such good verses, verses that I have read before but haven’t had an impact. Being a missionary makes me have a different mindset. It’s been fun to read the scriptures. I still don’t like reading though.
Prayer. I was asked the question at a district meeting about this. How do we teach prayer? Do we just say it’s how we talk to Heavenly Father? No, we should take more time with this. One way that I have started to teach people about prayer, and how God answers our prayers, when we have a question, is this, it’s like a phone call. You don’t just talk talk talk talk and hang up. You talk and then listen. When you are listening, you recognize the feelings of your heart, the thoughts of your mind, it’s during this small time that we get personal revelation, we get answers to our prayers. It’s something that I do after every personal prayer. I offer the prayer and when I am done, I wait. I focus on these feelings and thoughts. Sometimes I get answers, sometimes I don’t. Heavenly Father acts on his own time but he will answer the questions we ask Him. Something to think about.
Everything in Liberia is sweet!! The work is awesome!
I love everyone back home! I miss everyone too!
Elder Park
The White African
T.I.A.
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