On this blog my wonderful mom will post letters from my mission in Indiana. If you would like to read them, they will be here :) And you can even follow by email, if you want. Purdy cool.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Miracles, Challenges and Blessings!

Sister Goldrup got her visa!! So she will be leaving to Australia next Monday...which is a week and a half into the transfer...and I have no idea what they'll do with me for the next 4 1/2 weeks....President Cleveland called to tell us about her visa on Tuesday. In the call he asked, "Do you have any people you're teaching? Any progressing investigators?" I almost asked him, "What do you think we do all day?!" But I didn't. We do have a lot of investigators. Our new district leader Elder Zeyer asked us how we had so many. "Uhh...we give people commitments to keep...and the keep them..." So, it might have a negative impact on their salvation if they have to take a 4 week hiatus. But Heavenly Father knows what's best, and President Cleveland knows how to seek His inspiration. So good things are to come, either way.
In other transfer news, Elder Lawrence got transferred, and in his place is Elder Rasmussen (one of the 7 missionaries in Indiana from my MTC zone.) So now the combined field experience of all 4 missionaries in the ward totals slightly more than a year. Thank goodness our ward is patient with us.
In other news, we were able to have a good conversation with J. Every time we'd gone over since he'd dropped us, his cousin had been there. J is always glad to see us, and likes having churchy discussions (which is good...'cause that's all we talk about), but we can't talk about how he really feels about the Book of Mormon and whatnot 'cause his cousin is one of the reasons he dropped us in the first place. We were finally able to ask him what had changed--why he was so close to baptism and then stepped back. His answer was one word: fear.
He talked about how he really really loves Jesus. And we know he does. I don't remember how much I said about him earlier, but once he discovered who Jesus was, he prayed for 6 hours everyday. He read the Bible in a month. He feels the spirit and know what it entails--which is something most people don't understand unless we can tell them--and even then it doesn't always sink in. We shared Hebrews 10:35. Then his drunk neighbor, P, made us brauts (that were really good.) And then we shared 1 John 4:18. I love that verse, and hope he lets it change his life.
I don't remember if I talked about this miracle either--we are teaching this Micronesian family the mother of which has cancer. Her husband told us last time that he killed a man--and that's why he keeps his hair long--or something like that...he's kinda hard to understand, but that's neither here, nor there. Anyway, their daughter asked us to pray for her mom. She's got this tumor on her neck, that I guess hurts a lot. So before we left, we said a prayer. The next time we called them, M (the mom), said that her pain was gone! We may not be able to communicate with them super well in English (or in Mandarin), but the language/healing of the spirit transcends language barriers. M came to church too. She said she likes to feel the spirit, even if she can't understand much of what's said.
And thus we see that there were more miracles wrought, other challenges endured, more blessings received, much of which cannot be written for the sake of time and energy. And thus commenced the 20th week of the ministry of Sister Bowen.

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