North Carolina Charlotte Mission

Behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are your brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord, power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren, again unto thee. -Alma 31:35

Thursday, December 6, 2012

1/19/12 "The turkey is a truly noble bird"


"The turkey is a truly noble bird"  
(danny is quoting from the movie of the musical "1776" - a conversation between john adams, thomas jefferson, and benjamin franklin about what the national bird of their new country should be.  adams votes for the eagle, franklin the turkey, and jefferson the dove.  you know who won the argument.)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I just want to take a moment to write down a few of things I'm grateful for:
1) A wonderful family, both my earthly family, and also my Heavenly Father, the Savior, and everyone else around me.
2) Being a member of the Church, knowing the truth, and having the chance to share it with everyone
3) A great mission, a great Mission President, a great area, and a great companion
4) Having a healthy body that can bike for hours each day without getting sore or tired
5) The existence of a Cici's Pizza in my area, which may or may not eliminate #4 on this list before too long. Its alfredo supplies suffered a major blow last Saturday at lunch

There are just so many things to be grateful for. I could explain my thoughts on this, but I would much rather give you some experiences instead.

First off, I got a letter from Laura this last week, which really brightened up my day. Thanks so much, sis! Due to the transfer, I'd kinda been out of contact for a while, and it was great to hear from someone.

This week we had a Leadership Training Meeting in the mission. I don't have any sort of leadership position, but I got invited to attend anyway, and it was some great stuff. Two former mission presidents from Salt Lake came and spoke to us. One of them, President Wade, had been the button-pusher for the Apostles when they assigned missionaries. He saw 160,000 assignments over 12 years, which he said was 16% of all the missionaries called in this dispensation. Wow. We talked a lot about teaching, and working, and how to prepare for the oncoming tsunami of missionaries. I was so glad that I got to go.

As I wrote in my last email, we met a lady named Henrietta my first day in Pineville who said she'd met with missionaries before and wanted to start again. Unfortunately, the number she gave us didn't work and we didn't get any of her address information other than A) she lived in an apartment and B) the apartment complex's name started with a W.
So, this last Sunday we went to go try and find her. We prayed very hard so that we'd be led by the Spirit, and headed off.

After biking for about forty minutes or so to reach the place where we met Henrietta, Elder Heydorn stopped to go try some apartments that did NOT start with a W. Then, instead of stopping at the entrance to lock up our bikes and start looking, like I would have done, he just biked all the way to the end of the complex. Third door we knock: lady opens up, says "Elders!" and invites us in. We actually had knocked on the door of a Spanish member, Dora, and her nonmember boyfriend Lenus (?), so we got to teach him the Restoration. It was really a great experience, and we felt led by the Spirit. I mean, what are the odds that of all the apartments in our area, of all the doors we could of knocked, we got the member?

But it doesn't end there. After that lesson, we had only a half hour or so to spare before we needed to be at home, so we had to decide whether to keep knocking doors in that apartment complex or to go and look for people in apartments closer to our residence. We both felt prompted to head home. As we were biking down the street, one lady called out to me, so I got Elder Heydorn to stop and we turned around to go talk with her.

Her name was Gloria, and she was waiting for the bus. She had talked to some elders 3-4 weeks ago and liked what she heard, so I quickly got her contact information (since obviously the elders hadn't gotten it before) before we started talking. Turned out to be a good decision, since the bus came moments later and she had to leave. When we got home, we found out that the elders who talked with her were none other than Elder Hales and Elder Howell, the Zone Leaders, who had felt really bad for not getting her address before.
If Elder Heydorn and I had not followed the prompting to head back towards home, Gloria would have gone onto that bus and she would never have seen missionaries again. Because we did follow the prompting, she met with missionaries a second time, and we're going to go visit her this week.

This whole experience just blew me away. We did not find Henrietta, but we found Dora, Lenus, and Gloria instead. I have no doubt we were led by the Spirit that night, even though we didn't feel any strong promptings or anything. We were just two elders trying to do our best, and the Lord was able to take that and make it amazing. I think it's so cool how the missionaries missed Gloria the first time, so the Lord made sure that we bumped into her a second time. He truly does love all His children.

This work is true, no doubt about it. It is Heavenly Father's work, founded and directed by the Savior, with one of His prophets at the head. Right now I get to be a part of it, and that's definitely something to be grateful for.

I love you all, and I love my mission! Happy Thanksgiving!

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Fisher

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