Zdrastvuitye!
Wow! What a crazy week this has been! Both spiritually and physically. First of all, the weather is insane. After the snow storm on Monday it was pretty warm outside, nothing to complain about. It was also considerably warm on Tuesday. We looked out the window on Wednesday morning and it was blizzarding again, only worse than on Monday!!! Instead of snowing a couple of inches, it snowed like 4 or 5 inches. Later in the day there was a big rain storm due to the warmness of the weather and everything turned into a big, flooded swamp. Huge chunks of snow were plummeting off of trees and buildings all around us and splashing waves of water on us. I have never been so wet in my entire life aside from going swimming. I was on an exchange with another Sister and we were on our way to an investigator's house when all of this was happening. Her boots definitely weren't waterproof and her feet were soaked! When the investigator's grandma saw my companion's feet, she freaked out and demanded that she take off her socks. She made her granddaughter fill up a bucket with hot water and then she sprinkled some mustard powder into it. My companion literally soaked her feet in hot mustard water. Yum.
Man, Sister Wilson and I saw so many amazing miracles this week! I can't even begin to describe how blessed we've been. The Lord is keeping his eye on this part of the vineyard, that's for sure. Here are some examples:
One of our investigators has been a great cause of concern this week. She has been investigating the church for about 4 months and has received numerous baptismal dates. For one reason or another, they never ended up working out. The last baptismal date was rejected because she was still waiting for an answer to know whether or not this church is true. A little while after that she ended up dropping us; our perfect investigator dropped us. We were devestated! After giving her some time to sort things out, we began meeting with her again. On Friday she is going to be visiting Balakova, a city where her parents live, for a couple of weeks. Last time she went to Balakova, it was almost impossible for the other Sisters to get a hold of her and she kind of fell off of the face of the planet for a while. Her parents are very against the church and they had some harsh words for her when they found out that she was investigating the church. It took her a while before she decided to meet with the missionaries again. Sister Wilson and I were terrified that this would happen again, so we asked for some advice from President Schwab. He was quiet for a little bit and he told us that he felt very prompted by the Spirit that she needs to get baptized before she leaves. So that's exactly what we told her. That meant that she would be getting baptized 5 days from that point. She looked a little bit shocked, but agreed with the proposition. The next day, people were congratulating her right and left after her baptism was anounced in both branches, but she shyed away from everyone's words of encouragement. Whenever someone would ask her "Are you getting baptized?" she would say, "I guess so," or "Probably, yes." We could tell that she was feeling pretty shakey about it all. She was still worried that she didn't know whether or not the church was true, and she wasn't completely sold on getting baptized, but she hadn't cancelled the baptism or anything. Sister Wilson and I were so nervous that we were pushing her too fast and that maybe she wasn't ready yet. We had our zone leader call around and have all of the members and missionaries in our zone pray for her. Before this was even put into effect, we got a call from her! Sister Wilson and I were terrified! She said "Hey, so I've been thinking a lot about baptism lately"... *pause* At this point we were expecting the worst because her voice sounded a little bit shakey... we thought she was crying or something. Anyways... then she said, "I've been thinking about the questions that you asked and I've decided that I really want to get baptized." Sister Wilson and I said, "What?" out of shock, and she said again, "I really want to get baptized." We were laughing and shrieking into the phone out of excitement and probably scared the living daylights out of her. She told us that she layed down for a nap and had a dream, and when she woke up, she just knew that she needed to get baptized. Miracle!!!! The Lord is really looking out for His children! She finally got her answer and it took that tiny step of faith of accepting a baptismal date for her to receive it. I am so excited to see what the Lord has in store for her. She's such a miracle!
We saw a bright new face at our English group on Friday. A sweet lady showed up and she is the definition of a golden investigator. Nobody invited her to church, nobody told her about English group beforehand, she wasn't referred to us by anyone, she just showed up on her own. She doesn't live too far away from the church, so she frequently rode her bike past the church building. After a while of riding by, she decided to come inside and see what goes on here. Amazingly, that was the same night as English group, so she stuck around. Also, she speaks perfect English and absolutely LOVED English group. She is the friendliest person I've ever met and she became best friends with us and everyone else right away. She participated at the activity, agreed to meet with us, and came to church on Sunday! The members fell in love with her and we didn't even have to escort her around because she made so many friends. When she heard that there was going to be a branch service activity cleaning the branch building, she was pumped and wants to come so bad! Man, she is so prepared! The Lord loves these people so much and He's making sure that we find them!
Oh yeah... speaking of English group. Sister Wilson and I were in charge of teaching the group The Word of Wisdom, and we wanted to start off with an object lesson. We put a bunch of trash like wrappers, used napkins, soggy bags, old food, etc on a plate and said, "Hey everyone! So, we didn't have time to go to the store and get some refreshments, but we found this bag of trash on the side of the road that had some food in it, so we brought that instead. Eat up!" It was supposed to be symbolic of how you would never put garbage in your mouth like tobacco, drugs, alcohol, etc, but when we walked around with the plate, some of the people literally started eating the trash! There was a bag of old cookies on the plate and a few of them actually ate them!!!! So gross!!!! Super funny, but really nasty.
Welp, that's all for this week folks! Don't eat food from the garbage or soak your feet in mustard water.
Do Svidanya!
Love,
Sister Megan Wagstaff
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