Mountains and missionary miracles

This week has been busy with travel for missionaries because 11 missionaries go home and that means journals and travel needs to be ready. Sometimes it goes smoothly and other times things like missionaries need to go home at a different time than with the group for weddings or family events close to their returning.  Sometimes the parents plan to come pick up their missionary and then plans fall through and you have to get busy picking up the pace for those that you weren't planning on with the travel.  I do a journal for each released missionary that has pictures letters and his or her assignment history. Letters from the president to them and their letters to him that is suppose to happen each week so, I print out about 100-200 pages of their mission letters.  Anyway April 28 is the release so that is why it is busy.  Plus this next week Dad and I go to zone training which is the whole week and some of that is two to four hours of travel plus the meeting.  We did find out that the mission office is not moving so we were glad about that.  Though it would have been a nice building to move too. It is probably a good thing not to push the institute out.  They just need to work at getting more students to take institute, because the building is not utilized very well. 

We are still doing missionary work on top of the office work. So the miracle! When we first came to TN we opened up a bank account at a bank close to the mission office.  A teller Ellen Long helped us.  We started telling her why we were here and a little about the church. We asked her questions which was not easy for here to answer because they were personal like about her family ect.  She was very reserved and did not give information very comfortably but we could tell she had deep feelings that were buried under hurt and anger.  She had lost her husband four years ago to the war.  She had a teenage daughters and from what we could tell not a strong understanding about way this happened. We just shared our feeling that God knows her hurt and her loneliness.  We could tell that emotions were close to the surface. We gave her a pass along card with the Mormon .org website on it.  Well months have gone by and we have prayed for her have seen her afew times at the bank.  Taken things to her to just let her know we care about her.  Found out her father in law passed away.  Gave her the dvd Finding Faith in Christ. We have just tried to follow the spirit in what to do for her.  We decided it was time to talk to her more than at the bank when she is working so we invited her to lunch on her lunch hour.  This we did this past week. She came and we talked more about things like the plan of salvation.  Dad asked her if she was looking for a church.  She said no.  So we just gave her our testimony of why we are here and that there was life before we came and there is life after this time on earth.  We again tried to listen to the spirit.  We found out she loves to garden.  We talked about gardening.  She then said that she is person that has to see to believe.  The thought came to me that I did not see her husband so why should I believe he existed.  I also thought that we take seeds put them in the ground and depending on the seed expect plants with produce to come.  Why should we believe that when we don't see how a small see could produce a watermelon.  So we talked about some things we learn from not seeing and just trusting.  Soon lunch was done she went back to work we went to the office.  That night she called us and asked if she could come to our church this Sunday.  

I told her we would love it. After getting off the phone we did a high five missionary dance.  Not a pretty sight.  Then we thanked our Heavenly Father for helping us say the right things that helped her want to take such a brave step as to ask if she could come to our church.  Most people listen to lessons then they might come to church if you beg them.  So today we waited at the door to see if she would come and she did!!!!!!!  The sacrament meeting was perfect for an investigator.  A young man spoke that is going on a mission.  A youth spoke on making decisions and a high counselor spoke about Moses and children of Israel not looking to the serpent to be healed.  He said you can't quench thrist with water you don't drink or satisfy hunger with food you don't eat.  The missionary going read a testimony he had written when he was younger and it was so strong in his promise to follow Christ. She said she liked having speakers that were not preachers.  She liked the smaller numbers of people.  They have huge churches in the south.. Some congregations are into the thousands or least 500.  It is cultural thing to go to church.  We hope she gets more feelings about listening to the things we have to teach her.  We told her she did things a little backwards. Usually there are lessons taught then you come to church.   

Sorry this is a long story. Pray for Ellen Long,  we hope to be able to teach her.  The miracle is that I wanted to have someone by my birthday to have the missionaries teach. So I decided to make it a matter of prayer.  Well it is not to far from my birthday and at least we have an investigator.. 

Here we a few pictures from a beautiful drive we took this week end.  Love you all.  Have a great week mom grandma and Sister Christensen