Week #6 Another Great Week Flies By

Montana sunsets are gorgeous!

Well this week was great! It has flown by!  It's funny because usually by 7pm I can't even remember what we did earlier in the day because it feels like it was weeks ago! So at the beginning of the week we had to ride bikes for a few days because our car was getting fixed, and oh it was a struggle. The first day was great and I loved it, I was super pumped to be riding all around town waving and smiling at people, it was awesome!  By end of the second day of biking I was absolutely worn out, apparently Great Falls isn't as flat as I thought! It is actually one great big hill, but on the bright side it is all down hill if you are going the opposite direction, so it all worked out!  I think my favorite part about biking (besides the exercise) is just smiling and waving at everyone you see, and it is awesome because usually people will smile and wave back! Well, we got our car back on Wednesday evening, and we sure do appreciate our car now!

On Tuesday we had a district meeting, which was really great! I gave a discussion/role play on asking direct questions and bearing testimony.  I think it went pretty well, but I seriously love my district! We have 3 sets of sisters and one set of elders, so it is great!

I love my District Sisters!

We had some really awesome lessons this past week, too.  One was with a less active member who is so awesome! He started meeting with the missionaries a little while ago and had no belief in God, well this past week we had a lesson with him and it went so great, he has such a strong testimony now and it is so awesome to see how the gospel and Christ can truly change a person. After I said the closing prayer in our lesson with him, he thanked me and said that something I said in the prayer made him realize that he truly did have a testimony. It was amazing because I know it was the spirit working through me, I didn't do anything, I just needed to be a tool in the Lords hand. I loved it!

It has been a week full of miracles and blessings! Sister Anderson and I have been working hard to find people, our teaching pool isn't as big as we would like it to be and we are looking for some solid investigators. We know that we will find them through the members. We have been really trying to focus on member missionary work with our ward and they are so prepared! We know the Lord has been preparing them to be missionaries to their friends, family and community. We have had 2 member families that invited non member friends over for dinner and we were able to teach lessons to them after dinner, it was really awesome! We know the Lord will continue to hasten the work through the members.

There have been many miracles this past week, but one that really sticks out in my mind happened Sunday. On Saturday we did a lot of finding and ended up teaching zero lessons, which was a little disappointing in my mind. We didn't have any lessons scheduled for Sunday either, and we were not reaching our daily goals of lessons taught. Before we left the house to contact people and tract on Sunday we prayed that Heavenly Father would help us meet our daily goals of 3 lessons taught. We didn't have any lessons planned with people, but we had the faith that Heavenly Father would help us find people to teach. Then miracles started happening! We showed up to a dinner appointment and the family feeding us had invited a nonmember friend over! After dinner we had the chance to teach him about the Book of Mormon and bear our testimonies of the truthfulness contained in it! We invited him to read the introduction and pray about it.  After dinner we went tracting and had 2 more lessons! During our various finding activities we had 3 more lessons! As we returned home after a great day, we were able to report on six lessons and reflect on how Heavenly Father is truly mindful of us as missionaries. We know that it was through Him that we were able to teach those lessons, we just had to have faith and act on that faith!



Sadly, our 'Pink Palace' got repainted this week, so we'll have to come up with a new name...

 I am so grateful to be serving in this area!  Some days are harder than others, but at the end of the day my heart is always full of so much gratitude for my Savior! This week we had a lesson with another one of our less active members and he was asking us about Christ and fulfilling our callings and purpose in the church and in life. I was able to testify that I know Christ doesn't just make up the difference, Christ IS the difference. It is through Him that I am able to fulfill my calling as a missionary. I am only human, I am weak, but I know it is through Christ that He can turn my weaknesses into strengths and He can work through me. It is truly humbling to see what our Savior can do, when we let him work through us.

Let me just say, the General Women's Meeting was SO amazing, I absolutely loved it. It got me so pumped for General Conference this coming weekend! Sister Anderson and I decided that the Women's Conference meeting is like Christmas Eve and General Conference is like Christmas!! Hopefully some of our investigators will attend General Conference at the church, that would be really great!

The BBQ Dutch Oven Cook-off was a success!!! I got to be one of the dessert judges, aka best job ever because I literally taste tested every dessert. Our bishop and his wife made this amazing pineapple upside down cake in the Dutch oven that won first prize!There was a lot of food and it was all super delicious.

If I could dress up for Halloween, this would be my costume!

Other Highlights From the Week
 
1. We were driving down the road and I was talking to my companion when all of a sudden she screamed and I got super scared (like my heart was pounding so fast) and she yelled "A squirrel!!" Because she had almost run over a squirrel and I yelled back "oh my gosh it will be fine!!" And she looked back at me and said, "NO, it would have been dead!!" ... I guess I need to have more compassion for the wildlife around me..

2. We tracted into an elderly lady who was super against our religion, but when we offered to do service for her she asked if we could basically spy/watch her house because she thinks her neighbor is stealing from her. She wanted us to sit in our cars across the street and watch for her neighbor "for a few hours". We had to tell her that sadly we were not allowed to perform that kind of service, it was pretty hilarious. She called us again this morning (because we gave her a Mormon.org card) and she asked if we could house-sit so her neighbor wouldn't steal anything, again we had to decline haha.

3. One of our investigators said that being part of our church makes
her so happy she wants to make a jacket that says LDS on it and wear it all the time. It was awesome.

4.We were contacting one of our potential investigators and it was
probably around 8:45pm, we knocked on her door and one of her hall lights turned on, then the light right by the door turned off. We
knocked again (because we knew she was in there) and then we heard a knock on the door.. Aka she was knocking on the door back to us? We were so confused and then we saw her peering through the blinds of her window. Anyways, turns out she was just scared cause she didn't know who we were, but it was just very confusing when she knocked back at us!
 
It was a great week! Thank you for all your prayers, letters, emails, and love.  Montana is great and I love being a missionary!!

Love, Sister Wong