Service in Seattle: Week 30 - Tiffany Park Tender Mercies

Hellooooooo!

Can you believe January is already almost over?! Everyone says that once you hit 6 months, your mission just keeps getting faster and faster....I believe it.

Another great week has come and gone! We are seeing so many miracles in Tiffany Park so this might be a lengthy email! I forgot to mention this one miracle in my email last time, but it happened a little over a week ago. A member had come up to us my second Sunday in the area and told us about her friend who was going through a pretty rough time. She had offered the missionaries to come over and say a prayer with her. The friend said yes! Sister Zhang and I went over with the member on a Friday night. We had no idea what to expect. We thought teaching a little bit about the Plan of Salvation would be good for her. When we got there, we found out her family is from Fiji and they practice Hinduism. So cool! But also, we were nervous to teach anything. How could we teach the Plan of Salvation to someone who believes in several gods? She shared with us her story and what she believes in and honestly...each religion is so similar! They believe in a higher power and so do we. We taught about God's love for us and how we can receive comfort during our hardships. We said a prayer with her family and the Spirit flooded the room. She had tears in her eyes when we left. Last week, we followed up with the member to see how Mona (the friend) was doing. Mona loved our visit and she wants us to come back!

We are still working with our part-member family. Casey wants to be baptized so badly, but he needs to marry Chris first. Chris knows the importance of marriage, but her first marriage continues to be a painful reminder of all the things that could go wrong. She is terrified to get married again and panics every time we bring it up. This week we brought a member to the lesson with us and she was a great help. She shared how prayer had comforted her when she was deciding whether to marry her future husband or go on a mission. We asked Chris to pray about marrying Casey to which she agreed. Sister Zhang and I fasted for them this week to be at peace with getting married. I know that if it is the Lord's will, He will make it happen. But...if you could pray for them, that would be great too. 😊

This week we had an interesting service opportunity. We got a call from another sister missionary in our mission asking us to go visit this elderly woman named Lucy. Lucy was calling and asking for help, but this sister had been transferred to Auburn so she couldn't really do much. We said we would go stop by Lucy's, who apparently is from Romania and hardly speaks any English. We found out with the help of Google translate that Lucy is living with her sister-in-law who doesn't like her. She won't take Lucy to the store and she won't let her eat anything in the kitchen. We ended up driving Lucy to the grocery store and buying her two loaves of bread! It was quite the adventure and Lucy is the sweetest lady ever. She was super grateful for our service and asked us to call her brother (he speaks English fluently). We hope to see her again soon!

This past Sunday I had to give a talk in church. It's crazy because being a missionary really helps you overcome any fear of speaking in public! I felt like I was just teaching another lesson and was surprised at how easy the words came to me. The Spirit is so cool! We also got to teach seminary one day and that was pretty fun. Although, it was early morning seminary so while Sister Zhang and I were having fun teaching about missionary work, the students were half asleep. Some were even in their pjs still lol.

On Sunday we had our mission devotional at the Renton Stake Center. And guess what happened?! Our Russian friend Neonila came! So basically a mission devotional is like once a transfer and we invite all our teaching friends to attend. There's a missionary choir and recent converts come to share their stories. Four missionaries are chosen to bear testimony on a main point of the Restoration. It's one of my favorite devotionals we do as a mission. But anyway, back to Neonila! We haven't been having any luck with her lately. She has two jobs and is always working so we never can meet with her. One day we just decided to slide a flyer for the mission devotional in her door. And she actually showed up....with her brother! Also, they asked us what time church starts and are thinking of coming! God is so good!

Today we went to the temple in Bellevue and it was amazing as always! I love the temple with all my heart and it's such a good place to be! It was of course raining when we got out and I didn't even mind. I've definitely learned to love the rain here!

Hope you all have another lovely week and look for the good in each day! We only live on this earth for such a short amount of time, so why waste it being in a bad mood? Choose to live happy and learn to love the rain!

love,

sister smith :)