My new companion is Sister Gotay and she is awesome! She is a convert and was baptized at 14, as a result of missionaries knocking on her door! (who woulda though?!) She is super sweet and thoughtful and has a huge desire to do God's work! I am pumped! Oh, and she's from San Diego, CA!
So many miracles this week!!!
Okay to start the week off we had a lesson with a HQ referral. Her name is Cutrice and she requested a Bible. She was so sweet, so humble, so prepared for the gospel!!! We taught her the Restoration and she was feeling the Spirit and love and peace, especially when we talked about the peace the gospel can bring our families. She seemed so excited! We got through the First Vision and the Spirit was so strong! As we stared talking about the Restoration of the priesthood her husband walked in. The environment completely changed. Cutrice seemed to put a wall up and got really tense. He introduced himself and we told him who we were. He was really awkwardly walking in circles and then sat down at the table with us. We kept teaching and got to the Book of Mormon and literally said, "the evidence of our message is the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ." and then her husband, James, was like "I'm going to stop you right there." and then he proceeded to tell us all the things that were wrong about the Book of Mormon and said that it had "no merit" and literally was talking himself in circles, this man made absolutely no sense. He was super condescending and forceful in the way that he spoke and there was no love in any of the things he said. And he told us repeatedly that he was a preacher!!! A preacher!!! While his wife and family are starving for God in their lives. All of his family would shut off when he talked and not listen, but when we could speak (he didn't really want to let us talk, and interrupted so much) his family listened to us intently. The fact is though, this man had no faith. He wanted to see the plates that the Book of Mormon were written on and told us there is no way they could be brought into Heaven, and then 5 minutes later told us that God could do what He wanted and He could bring them to Heaven...make sense? No I didn't think so either. If he saw the plated it would make no difference! We testified over and over and over again, shoot, I even cried when I bore my testimony. Every time we talked he would look at us but you could tell he wasn't listening to a thing we said, which is unfortunate for him because he has a lot of stuff wrong about us that we were trying to help him understand. He kept saying "you haven't convinced me" over and over and every time we were like, " we told you it isn't our job to convince you, it's God's job!" finally, after seeing this was literally going no where, we told him "hey, James, we don't want there to be contention and we don't want to argue" and this is what got us laughing super hard and is literally sums up all his logic. He said, and I quote, "Oh, I am not arguing, Imma argue, but I am not arguing." LOLOL after this though, I felt prompted to ask him if I could share my favorite scripture from the Bible, and I proceeded to share Proverbs 3:5-6. It totally changed the atmosphere in the home from hostile to peaceful. I talked about why the scripture meant so much and we all started sharing experiences with each other. I then testified of the gratitude I had for my morals that following Christ has given me and Sister Gotay did the same. Then, James started telling us that we have to be careful because we are going to face opposition, and we were like Cutrice we literally just told you about this before your husband came home! And then I felt inspired to share Helaman 5:12 with them. They all cheerfully agreed with the scripture and we were able to talk more of the joys that come as we center our lives on Christ. We asked if we could leave with a prayer (because by this point we had been there 2 hours...) and surprisingly he said yes, and let me offer it. I reverently prayer to Heavenly Father and everything was still and peaceful. He didn't say much to us before we left as we hugged all of his family members and called them by name. Their grand-daughter kept reaching for my hand as if she was asking us to stay. We texted Cutrice after and she told us she still wanted to meet with us!
Soooooo, another crazy miracle. We talked to an Elder who used to serve in this are and he was surprised to hear that sister Osthus had moved. He told us that couldn't be true. So we went out to the Boonies of Noblesville to figure out if this lady still lived here. We parked our car on the side of the road and started to walk. There were these 3 kids playing in the melting snow trying to sled and so I figured I'd ask them if they knew where the address was. Turns out they lived in the trailer park that Sister Osthus did. We asked if she lived in trailer 9 and they were like "um, we don't think so, oh, look! #9 is pulling up right now!" and literally the man owning trailer #9 is pulling up in his car. We asked him about Karen Osthus and said there was a Karen Ott that lives in #12 that we could check. We journeyed over to #12 and lo and behold it was her! She was ecstatic to see us!!!! She is of Native American decent and she gave us a turkey feather that was very symbolic and spiritual. She said she hadn't given anyone a feather in a very long time! She also told us she could see auras and that we were glowing like angels, and that we were "shiney" :) anyway, we asked if she knew anyone that would appreciate a visit from us and we hear someone yell from inside the house "Me!" so Katy is going to join us when we go back!
This is Heavenly Father's work. His timing is too perfect for it not to be. If we will "go and do the things the Lord commands" (1 Nephi 3:7) we will be blessed and receive help beyond measure. I have witnessed that time and time again and am grateful the Lord is able to utilize me as an instrument in His divine work.
oh, another good quote from James "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord (looks at us and realizes we serve the Lord)...with the Bible"
Serving with a Smile,
Sister Bradley
1. The feathers we got from Sis Ott :)
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