Mar Vista: Transfer 9: Week 3‏ / Jan. 18, 2011

Hello family!
 
First of all, I'm e-mailing on Wednesday because we had temple P-day. It was wonderful. I think that it was the perfect spiritual boost to help me finish the fight and make it through to the end of the fourth quarter. :D It has been quite a week. We have had some amazing miracles and also some intense opposition; more than I have experienced in my whole mission up to this point.
 
As far as this weeks miracles go, the ward is finally starting to warm up to us a little more and recognize and appreciate the efforts we are making. We have been putting together a ward mission plan to help the ward refocus on missionary work and get excited about it. The bishop is backing us up and we are seeing things change for the better, which we are really happy about. We have also found some amazing people to teach! On Saturday we decided to go to a community clean-up project down in Venice cleaning one of the main streets close to the beach, so we went there all dressed in our work clothes and ready to go, and we couldn't find the project anywhere. We had seen flyers about it all over town, but no one seemed to have heard about it. We ended up walking up and down the boardwalk from city rec center, to the county rec center, all over searching for this non-existent service project. We kept trying to contact people as we went, which was interesting, because I can't even describe to you what Venice beach is like. There was a big boardwalk with street-venders and a ton of "doctors" that are trying to get you to get a license for "medical marijuana," people heading to and from the beach, and kind of just chaos. So, needless to say, not the most ideal situation for a missionary, especially when we were dressed in our normal clothes and looked like just another street vendor. It turned out being a miracle though because we picked this one man out of the crowd and started talking to him, and he said, "you know, you are going to think that I'm crazy, but I just try to live my life doing whatever God tells me to do, and for some reason I felt compelled that I needed to come to California because there was something great waiting for me there." We told him that it wasn't a coincidence that we met him, and I know it wasn't, because there was no way under normal circumstances that we would have been there in that area, and we just happened to find this man who is truly seeking what God has for him in his life. He called us later that day and was asking all of these incredible questions, and telling us what he had learned to be true in his life and it was all things that we teach, like that God still speaks to us and continues to reveal his word, and those that try to follow Christ will be persecuted, and earning money isn't the most important thing in life. It was crazy how everything he said it was like he was teaching us. I know that the church is true, and it was just another testimony to me that we teach a truth that anyone who is truly searching can recognize and probably has already recognized as the truth before we even teach them.
 
I also had an experience in the Visitor's Center where the elders brought in an investigator that was having a hard time setting a date to be baptized, and after watching one of the presentations and talking with him for a little while, he recognized that he does want to be baptized and was willing to be baptized by the end of the month. It was a really great experience, especially because sometime in the Visitor's Center we feel like we miss out on seeing the end result, but it is so amazing to see when people have a spiritual experience here that motivates them to take that leap of faith and be baptized. I can't even really tell you or explain all of the cool experiences and miracles I've seen this week with spirit-guided lessons and awesome people that I've met, and plus I'm running out of time. But it was a great week.
 
On the other hand we had some crazy opposition as well. I was backing the car (Someone has to stand behind the car while it is being backed to double check that it isn't going to hit anything), so i was out of the car and my companions were inside, but I saw a teenage girl sitting on the side of the road across the street with her computer, so I decided I would run over and give her one of the cool new mormon.org pass along cards, and I was talking to her for a second when her mom came out of the house and said "Um, you are mormons and we are Cristians, so we really are not interested." To which I simply replied "But we are Christian." And she pointedly responded "No you are NOT! We believe in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and not some Joseph Smith and some other man-made book that you have that tries to taint the word of God. Honey, give her back her card!" I have never heard anyone use the Lord's name in such a spiteful and angry way. Shocked, all I could manage to say was "ok, goodnight" and hop into the car. Then the very next place we went we were trying to contact a less active woman that was on our ward list, and so we approached he house and heard three ferocious dogs inside, which alerted their owner to come to the door without us even knocking. From behind the metal screen door a lady simply said "sorry, we are not interested." So we asked her if she was Lisa, and when she realized that we weren't just doing the normal neighborhood rounds, but actually had a target in mind, she forcefully responded "Lisa, my LOVER, is not interested and does not want to be involved in your church. Please take her off your list." It was so crazy to have two of those experiences right in a row. I actually hadn't had that happen to me in my entire mission, so it was quite the experience. I think it just goes to show that there is opposition in all things, and that the truth will always be persecuted by people with closed hearts and minds that don't understand. I know that Heavenly Father has an amazing work for us to do here and that Satan is just doing everything he can to try and stop us, but he can't, because we have Jesus Christ there to back us up. Someone shared a quote in their talk on Sunday that said, "When Satan comes knockin', just say, 'Jesus, can you get that for me?'" I know that Heavenly Father hears our prayers and that Jesus Christ is always there for us.
 
Have a great week!
 
Sister Dansie