Kia ora!
I hope all is well for all of you :) For those of you who
have been keeping track of our adventures here in Middle Earth, I thought i'd update
you. This woman from South India that I wrote about last week - who we met at
the rest home - allowed us to come back last week. We sat down with her and
started talking. As she began to tell her story, she told us about how she was
raised Christian, and her mother was Christian and her father was Hindu (so my
comments last week were not 100% accurate, my apologies). The thing that has
really bothered her throughout her life was that there are so many
denominations. This seriously troubled her and she has been praying to know
"the truth" for years. We shared a message about the Restoration with
her and left a DVD with her as well. We will visit her this week to follow up
and share a more detailed message with her. Can't wait to see where this
woman's faith can take her :)
The family history center here in Westport is alive and
booming! We went in this week to get a better idea of how to do family history.
Many, many people we talk to have an interest in this, and it's such a blessing
that the family history center is at the chapel. 2 weeks ago a woman who we
hoped to start teaching soon said she would come to the family history center.
For a number of reasons she didn't wind up doing family history, but saw the
free display table, and took one of everything - a Book of Mormon, pamphlets,
pass-along cards, everything. When we went to go visit her, she said,
"Okay, teach me about all of this stuff." WOW! How amazing!!!
Anyways, my companion realized we needed to be able to tell people more about
family history in order to help people get into the chapel. We went to the
family history class and did some research. Sister Woodbury is related to a man
in the Doctrine and Covenants named Amasa Lymon (spelling?). We found a rather
intimidating photograph of him and promptly printed off two of them. One is on
the wall in our flat, and the other is in the refrigerator. When we get home at
night, he is greeted with a "hey Amasa!" or "hey, are you
getting cold in there?" It's the little things that make life good. I read
some about Stillman Pond, a distant relative of mine. He married his third wife
after being widowed twice crossing the plains. This woman was
the quintessential pioneer woman, giving birth to her first baby in the
back of a wagon or something like that. Anyways, her first husband asked her if
she wanted to go to California and search for gold instead of build zion in the
valley. She replied, "I came here for the sake of the gospel, not for
gold." What an inspiration! Her first husband left and she then married
Stillman Pond. She's the line I come from; it's an honor to be related to
her.
We are teaching a family from Zambia, and the wife cooked us
an African meal yesterday. It was like scrambled eggs with veggies and onion,
and then a cereal -type thing that was a lot like solid grits. You take a chunk
roll it into a ball in your hand an then grab some eggs too and eat it all up.
YUMMMM!! SO good :) It's called sheema or something like that. So good!! She
thought it was hysterical seeing me try to stir the pot. (and eat it
properly...) She's probably 6'5" and very strong - she even took pictures
she thought is was so funny. Hey, it was WAY harder than it looked!
I could keep going about all the stories, but this is the
best time of my life. I know that Gods loves us. I know that he hears our
prayers and wants us to feel his love. He sees all of our flaws and loves us
anyways. Not only does he loves us, he wants to help us overcome our flaws and
become the heir that he knows we are. I love the Lord, I love the gospel, I
love Westport, and I want everyone to take a taste of this because it's the
sweetest thing I've ever known.
Love you all!
Sister Rose
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