11/26/12 "It's a big tree"

"Not so close to the other ornaments, Connie Lou, it's a big tree!" 

(here Danny is referring to a quote from "The Forgotten Carols" by Michael McLean

So, as of yesterday, I am a sixth of my way through my mission. Not that I'm trunky or counting down the days or anything, it's just something I noticed. Something about running 63 laps 3 times a week before my mission made me good at keeping track of things. And thinking in fractions.

Thanksgiving was a lovely dinner at a part-member's home, so we got to kill two turkeys with one dinner by teaching a lesson afterwards. Thanksgiving is actually a great time to go find people to teach since they really don't have an excuse to not meet with you...it's not as if they're working or if they're going to go anywhere, and the whole family's at home.

At this time, our mission is preparing for a White Christmas, which means having every single companionship baptize. To help inspire us, at a Zone Activity I made a poster of Santa baptizing an elf at the North Pole. (They were wearing white, of course.) Heavenly Father willing, we'll be able to meet that goal.

Douglas, our awesome member of the Community of Christ, is coming along really well. We had an awesome lesson with him last Saturday where he opened up. He told us that he's been concerned about all the changes that he's seen in his church throughout his life, and he feels that the Reorganized Church has become "too Protestant." He wants to know if, when the RLDS's presidents made those changes, were they speaking as prophets of God, or as men? Changes like accepting any church's baptism (except ours), giving the priesthood to women, etc. We invited him to come to the First Presidency Christmas devotional; that'll help him know President Monson is the prophet, and it'll all fall into place from there.

We've had a lot of interesting experiences this week, such as bumping into a man who is a follower of "A Course in Miracles," which is essentially the result of two psychologists who couldn't agree with each other, so they concluded that both of them were right and neither of them actually existed. It's essentially Platonic thinking mixed with Buddhism with Jesus Christ stapled on top so that people will actually stay around long enough to listen to it.
Needless to say, it was an interesting lesson. He thought the Plan of Salvation was fascinating, though. We'll be going back to see him soon.

But there were two stories this week that I wanted to point out. The first is the continuation of an ongoing story that would probably be best in number form:

1. On my first day in this area, Elder Heydorn and I reached an intersection, and we decided to cross the street instead of turning.

2. Because we crossed the street, we ended up meeting Henrietta.

3. Because we met Henrietta, we went to go find her days later.

4. Because we went to find her, we stopped in an apartment complex and picked a random spot.

5. Because we picked a random spot, we met Dora and Lenus, a less-active and a nonmember, and decided to head home immediately after the lesson instead of staying around there to find.

6. Because we followed our prompting and headed home, we met Gloria.

7. Because Dora and Lenus weren't home for our scheduled return appointment, we went finding around their apartment.

8. Because we went finding, we met a young married couple named Christ and Amber, and their son Junior. They were SO excited about the Gospel. I have yet to meet a group of people as excited as they were for what we could teach them. They were excited about the priesthood, about the modern-day prophet, about the Book of Mormon, about everything. They readily accepted the baptismal invite and wanted us to come back the very next day.

 And this list will just continue to grow and grow, all because we decided to cross the street one day.
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Sorry, a lady in the library collapsed while I was typing, so we ran to go help her until the ambulance arrived. It kind of interrupted my train of thought.

The second story I wish to share was about a member we got to help this week. Long story short, we had felt prompted to go visit him during the week, and after the third day of calling him, he asked us to give him a blessing. He told us that he is addicted to painkillers, that he's been off of them for four days, and that he'd been praying for help. After our fourth call, he decided to take that as a sign. We gave him a blessing of health as he faces this addiction. It was a powerful spiritual experience.

It just goes to show, yet again, that the Lord knows. He knew when we crossed the road that we would eventually meet all of these people weeks later. He knew when we made those phonecalls that one of His sons needed help. And, as I saw a few minutes ago, He knew that the poor lady would collapse and wanted to make sure that the missionaries were at the library at that time. (By the way, the library I'm in at the moment is not the library we usually write emails at. Miracle? Oh yes!"

I love you all. I love my companion, I love my mission. Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Fisher