A member said that to me this week. Everyone is related to everyone around here. I try not to dwell on it.
What. A. Week. We learned a lot. And we taught a lot! It was wonderful. I enjoy the experiences to grow that I have every morning from helping Sister Reupena learn the language. Today, she asked me about the meaning of the words occasionally, acquaintances, envy, insightful, lust, assume, yearn, relevant, inadequacies, emphasized, recently, and seer. Helping her with grammar and pronunciation makes me realize how silly of a language English can be sometimes.
Three months ago, my trainer and I got a referral for a 12 yr old kid named Austen with LA parents. We showed up and he was super sassy apathetic about everything we said. "Yeeeah, no thanks. I've heard it all before. Not interested." So we dropped him and forgot about it. THEN, this week one night one of our ward mission leaders (we cover 9 wards) called us at 10:30pm and said that a 12 year old boy named Austen (the referral from February) had called him asking if he could meet with the missionaries because he decided he wants to get baptized!!! The WML gave him our number, then he texted us the next day and we set up a time to come over that afternoon. I was a tad nervous since he and his family were so stand-offish the first time I came around. But Austen was waiting at the door let us in, talked to us, and asked if we would look at some goals that he'd written down for himself. Um, sure! He hands us a folded up piece of paper with these goals written on it in his boyish chicken scratch:
**Meet with the sister missionaries
**Learn about God
**Learn about what baptism means
**Get baptized before the end of July
**Get the priesthood before September
**Pass the sacrament before Christmas
My jaw was on the ground. This kid!! He was such a punk a few months ago and now I had to hold myself back from crying and hugging him (so socially unacceptable...haha). He was SO sweet and polite and was asking questions and was SO excited when we told him he could get baptized in June. "I was thinking we could meet every thursday at my house and then every sunday we could have a lesson during the second hour of church. Brother Jackson [the ward mission leader] said it's okay." He literally was saying that he wanted to meet twice a week and would get baptized. Talk about a change of heart and countenance. That kid was such a tangible answer to my prayers!! I don't know if I'll still be in the area when his baptism date rolls around... But I have high hopes for this kid.
No effort is wasted, my friends. No effort in reaching out to others and no effort in working to improve yourself. Have faith that the little things you do that may aggravate you are little by little laying a foundation for a work greater than what you can see right now. Trust that God knows more than you do, and trust that the work you put in will not be for naught.
Thank you all for your support and love.
Faithfully
Sister McIntosh
PS: Here is part of an email I got from the Idaho Pocatello mission office:
We are making more changes in the operation of our mission office regarding mail. Instead of sending your mail to the mission office and then forwarding the mail on to you, we will now ask you to tell your family and friends to send your mail directly to you.
You will be able to inform your family this change in your weekly e-mail. When you are transferred there after you can inform your family of the change in an email and if needed you can get change of address cards at the Post Office, fill them out and return it to the Post Office.
This change will help get your mail to you in a more efficient manner. This is to start next week, Tuesday, May 31.
Just FYI
XOXOXO
1&2. EXCHANGES! Had a great time with sister Kolo.
3. That came from a can. Fish. In Ragu, or something. I almost vomited.
4. My camera is the zone camera. Everyone uses it haha.
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