By small things.........

Last week I was caught up with my work so decided to go back to June 2008 and see if there were any requests for B of M, Bibles, and DVDs from TV ads that hadn't been sent out. I found about 100 that needed to go out from before we got here. It took me all day to get them in the mail.
Today a woman called and asked why she got the B of M when she didn't request it. She had never even heard of the Mormons but wanted to know who Nephi and Moroni were so she must have read at least the first page. Her husband is in Iraq and she said a couple of months ago she was feeling like she needed to get some religion so this past Sunday she went to a church at the mall (Like.....everyone finds their church at the mall!) She said she was so disgusted with the preacher. He was wearing levis and a T-shirt and preaching the Bible using street talk. She said she left saying to herself, "If this is what religion is about these days, I don't think I want a part of it" and then the next day this B of M comes in the mail from nowhere. Sister Dalling gave her the 1st discussion over the phone and she said she would let the missionaries call her but didn't want them to come over until she had thought about it. The Lord works in small ways to bring about great things. Who knows what will come of the B of M she received.

Do we have a new assignment?........

This morning I received an e-mail from an Elder at the Provo MTC saying that he had talked online at Mormon.org with a lady from Helsinki and she wanted someone to come and teach her about the gospel. I couldn’t figure out why he would be asking a Florida mission to give lessons to someone who lives in Helsinki. I asked the Assistants to the President if they would like to take this referral (joking of course) because I had to get permission last week from them for some Sisters to go slightly out of their area to teach a referral. It was actually in the Orland mission but they didn’t want to come that far down. We got a good laugh out of it. There was no address and the phone number didn’t have enough digits.
About 1 hour later Tim came into our office area and said he had just gotten an e-mail from the financial secretary in a Honduras Mission. It said, “Hey Tim. I got a quick question. What is the number for the front desk at the MTC?” Tim said, “What do people think we are….the directory assistance? And why is he calling me by my first name. How did he get our e-mail address?” Sis Dalling and I broke into uncontrollable laughter until our sides were hurting from laughing so hard. Later when I answered the phone for her, I would tell her it was someone from Hong Kong or Denmark, etc.
Tim found the phone number and e-mailed the man in Honduras and asked him “Have we met before? How did you get our e-mail address and why are you asking about phone numbers in Provo?” It turns out that I had sent a referral for Honduras to the MTC via our e-mail account. They forwarded it to the Honduras Mission. I guess they thought Tim worked at the MTC referral center. Funny set of circumstances!!! We laughed about it several times throughout the day and the man got the phone number he needed. We did not figure the Helsinki story out.
We celebrated by going out to a Chinese Buffet with the Dallings and laughed about our day while eating again. We have a lot of fun with them.

It's a lovely day in the neighborhood.........

Sad news!!! The sister missionaries dropped our investigator this week. He was not progressing but he said a seed was planted. He remembered the story of faith like a mustard seed from the B of M.

Corlyss asked for some pictures of the area we live in so here are some going from our apartment to the grocery store this morning. Going out of our apartment complex

Turning the corner and heading South.Traveling South on Pine Island Road (towards the office).The entrance to the grocery store

Knock knock.....Who's there?

We have had a very busy week. I have helped with 2 dinners at the Presidents' home for two different stakes and all of their bishops and the wives--one on Wednesday and one on Friday evening. Monday and Saturday evenings we went to Miami to help host a display of the "Reflections of Christ" pictures for 4 hours each evening. A photographer has taken pictures of Christ's life using real "today" people. He displays them in a beautiful way in the cultural hall, with lights off and only the pictures and spotlights on them with soft music playing. It is a very spiritaul display. The missionaries figured we had about 800 people come over the last week. They showed it for 2 hours in the mornings and then 4 hours in the evening.

On Saturday, the ward missionary committee (8 members) and 8 full-time missionaries, including ourselves, went knocking on doors of 4 streets within the ward boundaries for about 1 hour. We got 13 referrals during that time! Tim and I got 1 of them. Our ward has a goal of 44 bapstims this year. The first door we knocked on got slammed in our face. A 35ish may came to the door (11:30 am) and said "Man, you just woke me up. This is not good!!!!!" and shut the door. I think he was having a hangover. The ward will do this same thing once a month for the year. We found that the full-time missionaries did not have as much success as the ward members so they sort of said, "You don't have to come every time. Only if you want to." I think the badges, white shirts and ties scared quite a few off. Needless to say, we are exhausted.

Here is a picture of the iguana that has been hanging around our back door and the view out our bedroom window as the sun came up this week.

Meeting Elder and Sister Zwick

We were privileged to meet Elder Zwick and his wife from the First Quorum of Seventies when he came to tour our mission this last week. They are good friends with our mission president and told some great stories about working with Pres Monson and some of the 12 apostles. He loves to know about people.