This week has been a great week! We had lots of physical activity (not that we don't normally on bike). On Monday, we got to have Zone Sports day filled with Soccer and Ultimate Frisbee. That was a blast as always! Tuesday, the Young Men invited us to play dodge ball with them and their nonmember friends for mutual as well as share a message at the end. That was a lot of fun! I still have a decent arm haha. Saturday night we were invited to play coed volleyball with the ward. There weren't very many nonmembers as present but oh well, we still had a lot of fun. And I got to see the Hansens from the Redmond 1st ward!!! Wahoo!!!
As for miracles, there were many this week. On Tuesday, we decided to go visit Jing. We hadn't seen or heard from her in about 2 weeks and we were worried about her so we stopped by. Turns out she has had a pretty rough past couple of weeks. I won't share too much because it's private but she expressed that she was pretty angry. She was quite unhappy and at first didn't really want to listen to what we had to say. So instead, we listened to her. The Spirit was present and it was strong and after talking with her for about an hour and a half her entire demeanor and attitude changed. She went from refusing to read, pray or even consider church, to committing to read 3 chapters from the Book of Mormon, praying twice daily, and coming to the Member and Missionary Fireside on Sunday! She commented that she loved how she felt when she met with us. We told her that was the Spirit. We even set up a time to visit her again on Thursday.
Fast forward to Thursday. We had a member invite her over for our discussion. We taught Jing in the member's home and the Spirit was definitely there. Jing and Sister Walton really connected. We taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At the end of the lesson, Jing looked at me and asked "Well, what do I have to do?" Earlier that morning, Elder Egbert and I had discussed inviting her to be baptized so my response was to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized. She accepted it. We invited her to be baptized on November 22. She accepted with the immediate response "How did you know?! That is the day that I become a full time employee." Turns out, when she becomes a full time employee, she has more control over her schedule and can request time off of work (ie for her baptism!). The Spirit was so strong. I grew to see that the Spirit can reveal things to you that you would never know. Often times, we don't even know why we have had that prompting or something revealed. We did not know why we should invite her for that day but we felt strongly that we should. We had discussed other days that seemed more reasonable but November 22 was the day we had been prompted for. So we stuck to it.
Sunday, I had the opportunity to teach Gospel Principles. I love to teach! I always learn something new. I was teaching about "Developing our Talents". This is something I have been praying to know. What are my talents? Talent is more than just being "good" at something. I learned talents are something we work at. It takes effort. One can have a "natural talent" for sports, music, or even something like gaming. But it is not until we exercise that desire to become better that we truly gain that talent. If we simply know we have that ability then do not exercise it, we will lose that ability. I gained some personal revelation on one of my talents. I have always wanted to be a strong public speaker. I confess, I am not there yet, but as I had the opportunity to teach to a classroom of adult-- many of which I would consider strong speakers and more intellectual than I-- the Spirit helped me see the progress I have made in the last 16 months. What a great blessing that has been for me.
I hope you have had a great week! I love you!
Love,
Elder Connor M. Garriss
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