HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!
I hope ya'll are
having a wonderful day cooking burgers and lighting things on fire! I will be
sound asleep in my bed :) No fireworks for missionaries. We did go see a parade
this morning! It was actually worse than the parade in Kaysville hahaha at
least Kaysville had candy. It took place
in a really cool part of Pinehurst though so we explored around and shopped. No members invited us over so we are having
dinner with a non-member Kate! (I talked about her on my first week in
Pinehurst) We are then volunteering at the city event they have going on
tonight doing games with kids so that should be fun!
This week was
absolutely INSANE! I can't wait to tell you about it! Start things off with
last Monday we had dinner with a senior missionary couple in our ward over the
addiction recovery program. Our mission
is doing this thing with our members called a Family Mission Plan. It's a packet we give members that gives them
the steps to creating a plan for their family to incorporate missionary work
into their daily lives. Sounds like a
fantastic idea right?? It is! Except literally no one does it. But we had hope this Monday evening when
Brother and Sister Williams bring out their completed family mission plan typed
and everything! #blessings. After dinner
we had received a referral from their daughter in law, Sister Rebecca Williams
for her old neighbor, Jose and his family. We had plans to try them that night. We
knocked on the door and he answered and we introduced ourselves said S.
Williams had talked about them, etc. and you know what? He invited us in! They are the Estrada family and they are so
great! It's Jose, his wife Pamela and
their two kids Natalia and Nicholas. The
kids didn't take part in the lesson, but we were able to teach Pamela and Jose
the Restoration. Neither of them are
very religious, Jose has a belief in God, but Pamela is a little unsure. They were open and willing to listen! They even invited us back for dinner on
Saturday! Seriously nice people.
Tuesday we were
finally able to meet up with a less active, Taylor Robbins who we've been
trying for weeks. This girl is awesome and just needs a lot of love.
Thursday was the
"Ahuna Ohana" I have totally neglected to mention it, my bad. It was
a Hawaiian show put on by the Ahuna family. President James (our mission
president) sister married into the Ahuna family and they live in Hawaii. Their
whole family travels around and performs! They came and toured our mission
doing around 17 shows in just 4 days! They did the hula, dances from Tahiti, Samoa,
and the Navajo hoop dance. (I sent the videos of it all) It was incredible! Brought back so many memories of going to the
Polynesian cultural center as a family. We
had a really good turn out considering it was at 10 am on a Thursday and even
some non-members and Less actives!
Thursday night we had
another total miracle occur. We had
dinner with a part-member family, The Collins, and the wife agreed to start
taking the lessons, without hesitation, after having been coming to church for
over 2 years and not wanting to be baptized! You could tell how over-joyed
Brother Collins was. The spirit was SO strong. Luckily they are going to be in Utah for 2
weeks to take their kids to EFY and Brother Collins has it all planned out to
see as many temples as they can fit in. Their
family is going to be eternal soon enough!
I don't know if you
know this or not but North Carolina is really, really hot. A sticky, wet, hot and tracting in it is not
my idea of fun. Saturday we were tracting in it and I was really not enjoying
life. Nobody was really home and those
that were, were not interested. I was
just pushing through knowing that as soon as we finished the neighborhood I
could go sit in the air conditioned car. Probably not the best mind set to
have, but it was there. Heavenly Father
always comes through for us, always. I
have experiences like this all of the time, but in the heat of the day somehow
I forget. We found TWO families. I have never found a family tracting and we
found TWO. It of course happened right
at the end of the street as always. I
won't go into detail about them cause I don't want to jinx it so if you can
just pray real hard for us that these two families will recognize the truth
that would be great!
There is still so much
more that happened this week, but oh so little time to tell you!
This week I have been
so impressed by Heavenly Father's ultimate power and wisdom. He knows His
children and He knows what they need. We
are talking about a real life being, with flesh a bones, our Father in Heaven,
knows us and He does everything to help us.
"I think God
knows something we don’t—things that are beyond our capacity to comprehend! Our
Father in Heaven is an eternal being whose experience, wisdom, and intelligence
are infinitely greater than ours. Not only that, but He is also eternally
loving, compassionate, and focused on one blessed goal: to bring to pass our
immortality and eternal life." President Uchtdorf
Love, Sister Dearden
JK on the videos of
the Ahuna it takes DropBox way too long to load them so you might be waiting 7
months to see those!
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