What a week! I feel like I've been in Indiana for 5 minutes and 5 years all at the same time!!! How weird haha so this past week Sister Harris and I have been doing a lot of knocking on doors to try to find people to teach and let me tell you, it isn't the most encouraging thing to do most days. Thursday was especially hard. It rained all day. Literally ALL DAY!!! I also don't have rain boots so I am super lucky I wasn't freezing! haha We knocked on doors and people would say "wow it's really wet outside, good luck and stay dry" and then shut the door! Will you let us inside to teach you please?!? This obviously means a lot if we are willing to talk to you rain or shine! Anyway about the middle of the day we got pretty discouraged because we tried to visit a less active and she wasn't home and then we decided to tract that neighborhood. We knock on 3 doors, got rejected 3 more times and then this man came walking up to us with an umbrella because it is still raining and he proceeds to tell us in an annoyed and kind of angry voice that we ran over him mailbox! For real?!?! (usually you are supposed to back your companion out of driveways, but because it was pouring we didn't) We apologized and asked if we could do anything and he said no he just wanted to inform us. Definitely the cherry on top of a sad day lol anyway, but even through all this we kept going, and the next house we knocked on someone talked to us!!! AND she let us share our message and she said we could come back!! It is so amazing to think that we could have gotten discouraged and just decided to switch neighborhoods because obviously we weren't wanted there, but literally the next house we knocked on was willing to listen to our message! :) and we actually met quite a few people the rest of the day that said we could come back and share more :) this is not the first time that this has happened on my mission either! There have been so many times when I've though to myself "for real? Can we just have one person listen to us?" and not long after someone does listen :) It is all about finding joy in this work too. I love that Sister Harris and I can find joy in silly things like dogs trying to eat us (not literally) and spiders crawling across doorbells and playing Book of Mormon golf (a game where someone reads a scripture and the other person tries to guess where it is) so please in whatever you are going through right now, press on and find the joy in it! It is there I promise, and don't be afraid to laugh! I've had soooo many awkward moments but they are great! Treasure those!
I've been studying charity lately and how important it is to possess it as children of God. I came up with a little questionnaire for myself that I wanted to share. It is based of of Moroni 7:45
Do I "suffer long" or am I impatient?
Am I "kind" or am I rude and mean?
Do I "envy" others?
Am I "puffed up" or humble?
Do I "seek my own"? or do I turn outward?
Am I "easily provoked" meaning quick to get angry?
Do I "think evil" or "rejoice in the truth"?
Do I "bear all things"?
Do I "believe all things"?
Do I "hope all things"?
Do I "endure all things"?
Do I possess Charity? Am I striving for it? Or living it?
I invite you all to do a self reflection as I have done and choose some things to improve because there is always room to improve. Charity leads to an increase confidence in self because your confidence in God increases. An increase of joy, and love comes with it too, and I think that's something we all desire!
One more funny story, my comp and I did some service at this museum in Zionsville and we stuffed sooooo many envelopes!!! so many!!! We literally answered these ladies prayers because they were trying to stuff 1400 of them and there was only like 6 of them! Yeah, do the math, that's a long time! haha anyway we were a big help and they ended up inviting us to the activity for free!! It's like $55 a ticket!! And we could get in for free!! haha it's an Artisan fair though and there will be lots of drinking so we won't go but hey, it shows how much impact service can have on others and hopefully someday those ladies let missionaries in their home because they remember how we made them feel :)
Anyway, I love you all! Be Charitable! Remember who you are and what you stand for!
Oh, and we had our first lesson with Bryan today! I'll give you more details on that next week! Keep praying for him please!
Serving with a Smile,
Sister Bradley
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