Saturday, October 22, 2016

"Be not weary in well-doing..."

Hello everyone! Goodness, what a week it has been! I was just
discussing the events of the past week with Sister Wang and asking her
what happened last week and as I asked her about certain events, she'd
tell me...."No that was two weeks ago" but indeed, it was just a
couple of days ago. I guess that's always going to be the life of a
missionary. A day will feel like a week. A week will feel like a day.
We were able to stop by a few members last week and are really working
to build unity and increase the work here in Brighton. I loved the
emphasis of members and missionaries working together so we are
excited to continue to do that here in the ward. We got to work with
the young women and young women's president to help us reach out to a
13 year old that we are working with. Her name is Ajoa and she is
really nice! She has been coming to young women's for the past two
weeks now and we are working to teach her and her mom about this
wonderful gospel! :) For young women's, the group of the 6 girls,
us-sister missionaries, and the young women's president got to do
family history. It's been a while for me to do family history so when
we got on the website, I was the one asking the girls what the
different colours or squares meant on the family tree. I also needed
refreshing on all the rules of family history. It was quite fun! We
also got to play get-to-know-you games and it seemed to build a lot of
unity! The members are very good to reach out to the people we are
teaching and are good to friendship any who come to the ward
activities. For most of the week, we've been working to find through
activities. Activities such as young women's/young men's, YSA family
home evening, sports nights, etc. We seem to get a lot of success from
that. A lot of people we talk to hear about our chapel but have never
been to it before so they are quite surprised when they see the
church. Sister Wang and I traveled to a couple of areas this week that
we haven't worked too much in. There was an area called Portslade and
so we went Park finding and street contacting which proved to be quite
successful. There was a lady from Romania whose English was limited
but enough to let us know that she reads the bible and is Christian.
We pointed to our Book of Mormon and asked her if she'd like one in
Romanian. She smiled and said yes so we are excited to be able to stop
by her house this upcoming week and give it to her! We got to park
find and found some few people who were not all too interested but we
felt pretty successful in how many people we got to talk to that day.
As we walked by a tall fence, a soccer ball came flying toward us. We
jumped out of the way to avoid it and behind the fence, we saw two
young boys running up and shouting, "Excuse me! Can you get our ball?"
I picked up their soccer ball and smiling, we told them to be careful
because the next time that happened, there might not be someone to
pick it up for them. One of the boys shouted, "Throw it!" The other
boy yelled, "Kick it!" I thought about it and then decided to kick it
over the fence. I kicked it a bit too hard and it was much farther
past them and into the middle of the playing court. One of the kid's
eyes widened and he looked back where the ball had landed. He turned
back and as he looked to Sister Wang and I, he exclaimed..."That
was....AMAZING!" It sounded somewhat like the little kid on movie "The
Incredibles" when he sees something cool and says, "That was totally
wicked!" It made me and Sister Wang laugh and made our day. The week
continued to be great. We got to knock several streets and found great
success through that. At one particular house, a dad opened the door
and on his shirt, it said-"Proud dad." We smiled and knew how to start
a good conversation with that-- to which he opened up even more and
even got excited and showed us pictures of his daughters on the wall
next to the door. We asked him if we could come back and he said yes!
Miracle! As President Gubler and our mission has emphasised even more
on the season of miracles and a theme of #31, meaning a goal of 31
baptisms for the month of October which has 31 days, we suddenly felt
a greater opposition than we ever have before. We know that the
adversary is doing everything to prevent this work from happening but
we know now for sure that we are truly in the midst of the season of
miracles. This work is hastening! I can feel it! There were a couple
of days this past week where I seemed to have opposition as well.
There were trials and challenges that laid our way but with help from
leaders and people around us, we overcame them and still continued
this work. Following the days after the hard challenges and trials
that seemed like harder than ever before, Sister Wang and I felt
something. We felt the spirit guiding our paths, we felt a sure
knowledge that something great is going to happen! What a blessing it
is to be a part of this great work! Our mission president said it
perfectly, "When you're drowning in fear, doubt, or discouragement,
don't forget that your lifeguard walks on water. We should wake up
with an expectation that it will be a good day, because we have Jesus
Christ on our side!" The rest of the week proved to be wonderful!
Sister Wang got to give a talk on Pioneers this past week in sacrament
meeting and she did a great job. Being from China, she didn't know too
much about pioneers so the both of us got to work on her talk together
and it was a lot of fun. Not only did that happen in church but guess
who came to the Brighton ward!? Sally, the recent convert, from
Clapham! It was so wonderful to be able to embrace her in a big hug
and to see how everything was doing. The Lord does truly provide! He
loves all of us and He will never, ever give up on us! I testify that
this is His work! I love being a part of it and I want to be a part of
it for the rest of my life! Love you all!
Love,
Sister Burtis

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