This week went by super fast and super slow. At the same time. The Giordanos are progressing so well! They accept everything we teach them. Patricia also feeds us every time we visit. I've had lots of Italian and Brazilian food. Her husband, a less active named Antonio, has joined us for our lessons and he's great. It's awesome when he or Patricia ask a question, and the other answers instead of us. We love seeing them teach each other. We taught about about prophets and the Word of Wisdom this past week. Patricia asked about what they have to do to be sealed as a family in the temple, so we told her a bit about that and family history work. She and Antonio were really interested in both. This week is going to be tithing and fasting and also a review/catch up lesson so we can check for understanding and cover anything we might have missed. We also have exchanges this week, so I'll be in a different area with a sister training leader during the tithing lesson. Bummer.
We sat down with the elders in our ward this week and went through the whole ward list. We came up with a list of 100ish people in the ward who are less active or whose names we didn't recognize to go and check on. It makes me so sad that there are so many people who have stopped coming to church. Its almost always a pride thing. They get offended or think that they can stay spiritually healthy by themselves, so they let other things take priority over coming to take the sacrament and fulfill their callings. It is incredible how huge of an impact coming to church makes. People who stop coming also stop reading their scriptures and saying their prayers. They forget the doctrine. They start to resent commandments and the organization of the Church, which is ridiculous because they can hardly remember what its really like anyway, and they don't take the time to figure it out. They doubt their faith before they doubt their doubts and end up losing their faith altogether. So. My sage missionary advice for this week is GO TO CHURCH. ALL OF IT. EVERY WEEK. UNLESS YOU'RE SICK OR DYING. SERIOUSLY.
On the topic of people who do have a valid excuse to skip church, let me tell you about Sister Vivian Sims. Sister Sims is a 90 year old lady with a cute little southern accent that we went to visit this week. She is adorable. She asked us if we were from the Mormon church, and when we said yes, she said, "It's the only true church in the whole world! All the others are make-believe!" We sat with her for about an hour while she talked about her kids and grandkids and great-grandkids. She told us about her husband who had been in the navy at Pearl Harbor. He was much older than her and had already passed away. She kept saying about him, "It's terrible when you miss someone so much!" We talked to her about General Conference and I pulled out my gospel library art book to show her what President Monson looks like. He and President Joseph Fielding Smith looked familiar to her. She ended up going through the ENTIRE book and talking and asking about every picture. When we told her the story of Jonah and the whale, her jaw dropped and she said, "well I'll be da-gummed!" I showed her how on the iPad we can make the font really big. I read, "Now I, Nephi..." She tried to repeat what I had read, but is hard of hearing, so instead she said, "Now I reply..." It was so funny! I started laughing, but tried to hold it in, so it came out sounding like a sort of snort. "Sorry," I said, "I sneezed."
When we were leaving, she called out to us, "Don't wait too long before you come back!"
No worries there, Vivian.
Pictures:
.JPG)
