MIRACLE CENTRAL

This was one long, hard, boring week. Until the end of course.

God seems to like to work like that, last minute, how the heck did that happen victories.

We spent a lot of time knocking on doors (no one was home). That's about all we did. That's all there was to do. Everyone was out of town, and the people we did manage to catch at home were very unhappy that they were caught.

I was not happy with the way our week was going, but we forged ahead anyway.

Saturday night we were both in very bad moods and did not want to talk to any more people. But all missionary work is talking to people. So off we went to do the very thing we did not want to do.

Recently, we set a goal to spend at least 30 minutes a day street contacting in one of our apartment complexes in the hopes that we would be able to find people to teach.

When we got to the apartments, grumpy as can be, Sister Hatchett said a prayer and petitioned God to let us run into one of our buddies (we've made friends), so we could at least have one fun conversation. I kid you not; I said amen, opened my eyes, and saw our friend John right outside his apartment.

We talked with him for a bit and left laughing. It was a blessing.

Then Sister Hatchett was prompted to stop by this guy that we met sometime last transfer. We had given him a copy of the Book of Mormon and had set a return appointment to talk more. The original return appointment fell through as he had a work emergency come up. We haven't been in contact with him since. Until Saturday night when we stopped by. He was home, we taught him about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and set another return appointment!! He's read some of the Book of Mormon we'd given him and is currently trying to learn more about God!

At the end of a very long, rather awful week, God blessed us with a new investigator! Blessings.

It gets better. We've been teaching a 15-year-old girl (we'll call her Mae) for a little while. She was already investigating the church when I came into this area 2.5 months ago. She's super awesome, has a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and really wants to be baptized. But her parents want her to wait until she was 16 which isn’t until December. That's a fair rule that her parents have set, but she wants to be able to move forward in the gospel so bad.

On Sunday she walked by us and casually said,

"I'm going to need one of those baptismal forms you've got."

Uh, what??

She kept walking. We were stunned. Then we remembered we had legs and booked it after her.

When we caught up to her, she told us that her mom had changed her mind and was going to let her be baptized after she got back from vacation!! Which is only six weeks away!

Miracle #3 is that it rained!! Everyone in Arizona has been fasting and praying for this and boy were we grateful.

We also met this man named Reggie at one of our apartment complexes, and as we spoke to him he went from,

"No, I don't believe in God."

to,

"I guess I never thought about it that way."

to,

"I've been thinking about checking out some of these churches. I really want to see what that temple is all about."

We invited him to church (he didn't come 😕) and snagged his number so we could talk to him more.

We hope we can help him. He told us he'd had a rough childhood and didn't believe in God because he doesn't want to be judged for the decisions he's made when his background was the driving factor for the majority of his decisions.

We testified that the mission of Jesus Christ was to offer a way for all people, no matter their background, to be able to be accepted into the presence of God for the rest of eternity. 

Man, every day it becomes clearer and clearer how needed this gospel is. 

SO FOR THE LITERAL LOVE OF GOD SHARE IT WITH THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU. 

((The capitalization of that sentence is not to signify yelling, I just wanted to snag your attention in case you're just skimming through this email.))

Love, 

Sister Barlow