Follow The Spirit

This week we were able to experience the following:

- We put on a “Missionary Movie Night” complete with free Ice Cream and toppings, free Movie (Saratov Approach), and free Air Conditioning. The turn out was great and many folks in our congregation got to visit with each other and fellowship. They started talking about next month’s movie night, so apparently, we will be doing this monthly now. It’s a good thing and we love to serve. Plus, Ice Cream is tasty, and the movie is awesome.

- Sister Stewart-Longhurst’s brother and sister-in-law (Dave & Chris) drove the two hours from Walnut Creek to visit us and spend the day with us. We love seeing family here and we had a lot of fun showing them the fire damage, our area, and eating at a very great Mexican restaurant.

- On Sunday night, another fire broke out and was heading straight for the same area that has already burned and been evacuated twice since our arrival in June. Fortunately, plenty of help was called in and the fire was contained at the 102-acre mark. Fire season officially starts on September 1.

- On our P-day, we were able to do some Geocaching here in Clearlake. It is always nice to get out and do some recreating and get rejuvenated.

The spiritual theme for us this week appears to be that the Lord leads us to where we need to be and provides us people to help. To be honest, we were a bit baffled when the spirit strongly and urgently told us to go on a mission and to do so right now. And when we were called to the California, Santa Rosa Mission, we again were baffled a bit. We had friends who had served in Australia, Africa, New Zealand. Northern California? Who needed us there? We believe in being obedient to the promptings of the spirit, so here we are. And now, three months into our mission, it is clear as day as to just how inspired those callings to “go right now” and to “here in Clearlake” were. Very often this week as well as earlier through out our mission, we have been told by the people we are teaching and preparing to come back to church and to go to the temple that we are just the right missionaries to help them and that we knocked on their door at just the right time. These people that we have grown to love so much needed our personalities, our life experiences, our specific knowledge to be able to progress.

One sister in particular has not been to the temple in 15 years. We were able to help her resolve some issues and now will be attending the temple next week! She is a very giddy 80-year-old who can’t stop talking about going to the temple! We’re so blessed to have been able to help her and so glad we came on a mission right now. Being 80 years old, she wasn’t going to wait much longer for us.

Earlier this week we decided we had room for three more families to teach and thus set a goal to find three more. We prayed to the Lord to help us find them and set aside an entire night to do so. The very next day, at our first stop, we found a mother and her grown son who both need to go to the temple and are interested in having us teach them and prepare them. The next day, a member of our ward called us and told us about a new lady who had just moved in and needed our help getting back active in the church and who wants to return to the temple. And then that evening, there sitting in the church, was another lady who we had been planning to go see. She happily set up an appointment for us to come visit her. Minutes later, the Bishop asked us to go with him to visit yet another lady who needed a blessing and she also agreed to have us provide her lessons.

And just like that, our goal was not only met, but surpassed. We were humbled. And we didn’t even get to our “set aside” night yet.

The Lord truly is in charge of this work and is in charge of us also, if we will but let Him be.

We really love being missionaries and are feeling very blessed and honored to be an instrument in His hand to help people come closer to our Savior.