November 11, 2013

hello bob and all!

man! do i ever have a bad week? this one was so good! on monday we were invited to a members house to have fhe. it was the melby family. oh i love that family! the kids even had a non member friend over and he was involved with the lesson and the activity. it was good stuff. we used the balloons that sam gave me for my birthday. we (s mayle, me and the little member boy) taught the tree of life and then we reenacted the scene. s mayle was the tree and we taped the un-blown up balloons to her arms. they all went and got their "fruit" and then just for fun, we blew them up and decorated them with the stickers they came with. it was a joy :)

this last tuesday was the monthly missionary leadership council. sigh... those are always very bittersweet for me. but this was a good one :) i got to see s korman, caffall, cloward!! plus i got to see s aeschbacher and sowards, who were some of the first sisters that i was over as a sister training leader (stl)and now THEY are also stl's! exciting stuff :) oh. s cloward is not a stl, she is in a trio in bedford now and she works in the office a lot because of her medical condition. poor sister. i hope she isnt feeling too bad (physically)

 ok but i heard such WONDERFUL news!!!! do you remember me telling you about shelby and mo johnson? shelby was a less active and mo was her daughter. i was teaching them in augusta. mo got baptized!!!! also! remember ajoc joyce apollo? she was the south sudan lady i was teaching in bedford. her son called me elizabeth. she also got baptized!!!! ah! so much good stuff. i just love it!

my district leader, e crockett always tell us to never never never delay a prompting. i always try to remember that. i dont want to pass up an opportunity from the lord. so on tuesday we were so busy that we planned our dinner hour at 8:00. our lessons went over, so we ended up walking to our apartment at 8:45. s mayle was recounting a funny story to me as we walked. i looked across the street as we were walking and i saw a man on a door step with his face in his hands. i wanted to go help him, but i didnt know what was going on. s mayle was pretty caught up in her story, so she didnt see. we walked probs 20 more feet and i kept looking back at him. i couldnt take it anymore!! never delay a prompting! so i interrupted s mayle and told her we needed to cross and go back to the guy. so we did it! i went and sat down by him and thankfully the spirit continued to speak to me, because he opened up, listened up, took a pamphlet and made a return apt. amazing!

have i talked much about debbie? she is an investigator we have been teaching. she has taken us on roller coaster over the last 5 months. she is great though. we really love her. but recently we feel like we are at a dead end. like we dont know what to teach her. we dont know what message she needs to hear. she has been taught for a majority of her life and she is now 61. this week as i was thinking about her, i got the impression to teach her about the temple. usually we teach about the temple after baptism, so i didnt know for sure if we should, but i told s mayle about the prompting, and she said ok lets do it! she is such a good companion! so we prepared a lesson and we taught her about the temple. wowie!!! she absolutely loved it!! we met with her 3 times this week and she told us that she wants to be baptized! we didnt even bring it up! she just told us the news and set her own date. it was wonderful :)

to add to this wonderful story, a few weeks ago i got the impression that we really needed to take brother george sartorelli to our lessons with debbie. didnt know why, but we have been doing that. bro sartorelli loves teaching with us and he thinks  debbie is a challenge, which he enjoys. we have also really been wanting to get bro sartorelli to "da tempo". it wasnt until after we followed through on the prompting to teach debbie about the temple that we realized how perfect everything was lining up. wow! now we are teaching and preparing both of them for the temple, she is getting a connection in the ward, he is having some excellent missionary experiences, debbie is stoked about baptism and heavenly father made it all happen!! isnt he amazing!! wowie!!! he is just so good to us.

i hope i always remember to never delay a prompting. miracles only come when we listen to the one who really knows what is going on. i love heavenly father so much. he really does care. usually we only know he cares when we allow him to bless us.

ah! thank you for the 365 box! bob it was beyond perfect!! honestly! i cant thank you enough. thank you thank you thank you!! i love you! thank you for remembering!!

hey bob :) thank you for the news about dear cousin in the philippines. i was sweating about walker. glad to know he is ok.

me and my district are going out to have fun today. we were planning on leaving at 12:00 my time. i gotta go. i love you so much!!

lots of love, sister lani buxton!!!!!!!