I have limited time because we went to the city to go to the Temple for P-day today! It was AWESOME! Wow!! The New York Temple is BEAUTIFUL!!! I think it might be my favorite so far!! :))) It was so awesome to be in the temple and to learn and to feel such peace. Ahhh. It was seriously the best!! I loved it!!
Well Vasu was baptized!!! It was so so great! He was so excited to be baptized and after when he was asked how he felt he told everyone that he felt really really good. He stood up and asked if anyone had any questions for him. So those attending his baptism asked him questions about his conversion and what lead him to the missionaries and how the Johnson family helped with bringing him to the church. The Johnson family had invited Vasu into their home and we taught him there every Friday. Mom, you were just talking about the worldwide braodcast on missionary work. The Johnson family is the perfect example of what every missionary wants-- a family to invite a friend into their home to be taught by the missionaries. Vasu would not have been baptized without the Johnson family! And it was such a cool experience for them as well :) But speaking of the broad cast... that was amazing! The way missionary work is being done is totally changing! Technology is going to be incorporated so much more into our work. Our mission has not started doing FB, Blogs, Ipads etc but I think they will within the next year or possibly sooner. So that will be an exciting change. And the broadcast had a big focus on how the members need to step it up with sharing what they know with others. I just thought it was so great!
Well our car was broken into this week. There was no windows broke or anything so either they somehow unlocked it, or we forgot to lock our car. But they went through everything. I think they probably felt pretty dumb going through all our pamphlets with Jesus on the cover or our box of scriptures. But they found our GPS and stole it. So Sis Awerkamp and I have been trying to get around without a GPS. Surprisingly we have managed pretty well which seems like a miracle! But thankfully we will be getting a new GPS soon :)
So I know I have been talking about how quite a few people are leaving but seriously.... everyone is leaving! Three or 4 more families announced that they were moving out this week including our Branch President who literally holds our little branch together. It is a huge blow to our branch. The Johnson's, Hippens, Fillmore's, Stilson's, Altom's and Sister Van Beaver are out of here. And we are loosing a few individuals real soon. Last sunday our branch council was made up of the 6 missionaries in our ward, 2 members and our branch president. There is going to be a handful of people will actively be attending the Branch. It is a little overwhelming because we have no idea who is going to replace them! There are not enough people to fill the callings, do the VT or HT and certainly not to feed us or to have member present lessons with us. And here I am, a missionary who has been out 2 and a half months and I am going to be training and trying to keep our little branch going. It is going to be a challenge but I am almost a little excited for it. I am ready to work hard. We won't have as many people so we will have to cut back on what we can realistically do and then work to build it back up. One of our new focuses as missionaries is to help some of our recently baptized members to slowly start feeling confident in accepting a calling. We are going to take baby steps by having them teach a 5 minute lesson at the beginning of Sunday school or asking them to share a 3 minute testimony in sacrament meeting etc. Then you work a little more and more until they feel comfortable and confident that they can accept a calling! So that is what we will be working on in upcoming months as well as of course getting our Less Actives to come more frequently.
So we were tracking in Yonkers on Friday we knocked on a door and a brother and sister answered the door. The Brother, Mohamed said that he had just moved to NY from Egypt that very day!! We told them that we were missionaries sharing a message about Christ. The sister said that they were Muslim and that they were not interested. SO we gave them a mormon.org card and told them they could go on there if they had any questions. our number was on the back of the card if they wanted to call. So two days later we get a text from Mohamed saying that he wanted to learn more about Jesus Christ! We have met with him twice now. I am so thankful for the Middle east class I took last semester so that I understood a little about his beliefs and background. I am AMAZED how much our religions have in common!! It is unbelievable. They only believe Christ to be a great prophet so that would obviously be the biggest difference. But it has been so fun teaching him! We focusing mostly on helping him to have a spiritual experience. He agreed to read the Book of Mormon and to come to church with us this Sunday! He speaks French, Arabic, English and probably some more languages as well. But it has been really fascinating to learn about his culture and seeing how we have so much in common!!
Well I have got to go! I love you all so much! Have a wonderful week!
Love Sister Lounsbury
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